Score:0

Thunderbird not loading email accounts from profile after reinstall

in flag

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.

Score:0
ca flag

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

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