How to Move Thunderbird Profile to New Computer?

  author
Rollins Duke   
Published: July 28th, 2022 • 5 Min Read

When you switch to a new computer you often want to move Thunderbird profile to new computer. Especially when you are working on a desktop email client like Thunderbird or Outlook. The same may be required after a hard drive crash for instance.

As it is, we all know that Thunderbird is an open-source desktop email application that is similar to MS Outlook. Thunderbird allows the user to communicate from one or more email accounts and provides business productivity tools like calendars and task lists.

When you upgrade your computer, you want to make sure that your contacts, emails, calendars, and appointments stay with you. Unlike Outlook, there is no in-built feature to export your email and settings in Thunderbird.

Either you need to manually copy your profile folder over to the new machine, or you can take the help of a third-party tool. Both solutions we will describe below to move Thunderbird profile to new computer.

“Hello there, my Thunderbird email client has crashed, which I was using on my old machine. But today I acquired a new laptop, and once again I began using the Thunderbird email software on my laptop. But I need to access prior data, but I don’t know how can I achieve this. Please advise to me the solution that enables me to transfer Thunderbird email to new machine without Thunderbird”

Transfer Thunderbird Email to New Computer Manually

In this section, I will show completely free methods. Follow all the steps carefully.

Important Note: Your Thunderbird must be installed and working properly on your system. Also, you will need a location to save your data in before you can begin the process of transferring it to your new computer. You have a number of choices available to you, including a cloud server, a cloud storage device (such as Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive), or a USB flash drive.

  1. Open Thunderbird to move the Thunderbird profile to new computer.
  2. Now click on the “Menu” icon and then choose “Help” >> “More troubleshooting information” options from the appearing list.
  3. After that, select the option “Open Folder” from the screen.
  4. Next, close the Thunderbird application, and choose the “Roaming” folder as you can see in the screenshot.
  5. Lastly, search the “Thunderbird” folder and right click on it, and choose the “Copy” option.
  6. Now paste the data on your location, like we are using a USB drive, so first, we connect the device to the machine and paste the data.

Now you can connect this USB to new computer and move Thunderbird profile to new computer from the previous machine.

However, we are all aware that manual approaches come with their own set of problems and restrictions. You will not be able to utilize this approach if your Thunderbird is not functioning properly. Additionally, there are situations when we are unaware that the data on our USB stick has been affected by a virus, which results in the corruption of complete data. You need to implement the aforementioned approach in circumstances like these.

Advance Solution to Move Thunderbird Profile to New Computer

The BitRecover Thunderbird Backup Solution is one of the best and most advanced solutions to migrate Thunderbird email to new computer. The software has multiple advances and sophisticated features and capabilities like users can transfer unlimited and selected data from previous Thunderbird profiles.

The software has the power to move complete data of the Thunderbird profile. Also, the software provides 15+ destinations to copy Thunderbird profiles to another computer. Complete information and details are mentioned below and understand why professional tools are better than manual methods:

Download for Windows

Download for Mac

Why Professional Solutions are Better than Manual Methods?

  • The software maintains all the attributes and components of the email header and body like Bcc, Cc, To, Date, From, Subject, Formatting, Inline, Image, Attachments, Font size, and colors.
  • Also, the tool provides 15+ saving formats including PST, PDF, EML, MSG, MBOX, CSV, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, etc to move Thunderbird profile to new computer.
  • The software allows users to move complete Thunderbird profile data including emails, contacts, calendars, notes, journals, attachments, and other data with preserve the original hierarchy.
  • The utility creates with highly advanced algorithms, which makes the software powerful and different from the other brand’s tools.
  • It provides a dual option to upload Thunderbird profile data like the tool automatically loads Thunderbird profile data from the default storage location, and also users can upload the data manually.

Steps to Move Thunderbird Profile to New Computer

  1. Download and run the software on your machine.

    run the software

  2. And then, select the required data and upload the Thunderbird profile data using the given options.

    required data

  3. Now all the folders and subfolders will appear on the screen and choose the needed folder from here.

    all the folders

  4. After that, hit the select saving option and choose “Thunderbird” from the list.

    saving option

  5. And then, browse the saving location where you want to save the exported data like the location of the USB drive.

    location

  6. Lastly, hit the “Next” icon to transfer Thunderbird email to new computer.

    move Thunderbird email to new computer

  7. When the process will complete, you will get the confirmation message.

    confirmation message

Now you will get the data at the selected location, now you can copy and paste the data into the USB drive, google drive, or drop box. And then paste the data into the new computer and easily import MBOX file into Thunderbird.

Time to Say Goodbye

Above are some manual tricks to move Thunderbird profile to new computer, but sometimes these manual solutions do not work which will result in a data loss or become a time-consuming task. So, avoid this situation and use a third-party utility available to migrate Thunderbird email to another computer. These utilities are handy and reliable as well which will efficiently transfer Thunderbird emails to new computer without any loss and quick.