Thunderbird not loading email accounts from profile after reinstall

user3553031

12/5/23, 6:13 PM

Last week, a botched attempt by my IT helpdesk to fix a problem unrelated to email forced me to re-image my machine. Before I did that, I made a full backup of my home directory, which I subsequently restored. However, when I load Thunderbird, it does not recognize my configured email account. There is no error message, no prompt to set up an account, or anything like that; I just get a view showing only "local folders".

I've confirmed that I only have one profile in ~/.thunderbird.
If I run thunderbird --ProfileManager, it lists and allows me to select that profile.
On load, Thunderbird prompts me for my "primary password", which it appears to recognize, implying that it recognizes at least part of my profile.
"Collected Addresses" lists a large number of my contacts, again suggesting that it recognizes at least part of my profile.
grepping for my mail server name within my profile returns a number of hits, implying that I backed up and restored the right profile (as opposed to my old install using a profile stored someplace other than ~/.thunderbird.

Any idea how I can recover here? The data appears to still be in my profile; Thunderbird is just refusing to use it.

285

1 + 0

thunderbird

20.04

Score:0

Ubuntu

Hannu

12/5/23, 7:04 PM

BEWARE: This is from memory, I hope I remember correctly

Move away your saved data from ~/.thunderbird/
start Thunderbird
create ONE fake email account
stop Thunderbird
REMOVE the folder named similar to m85fenct.default from ~/.thunderbird/
COPY your saved .thunderbird folder CONTENT into ~/.thunderbird/
restart Thunderbird - your data should now be present.

+ 0

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Thunderbird not loading email accounts from profile after reinstall

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