Move from Thunderbird Portable (60) to Thunderbird standard (68)

[Martin Leist]

Hello all,

I'm looking for some guidance in moving from Thunderbird Portable 60.0.1
32-bit on Windows 10 to standard Thunderbird 68.6.

I've been happily using TB portable for years, but want to upgrade to
the newer version which is not yet available in portable format. I only
use the portable version so I can access my profile/mail-store from any
of three PC's (all Win 10 Home 64bit) - one at at time. The profile and
TB itself is stored on a shared network drive (M:\ThunderbirdPortable\)
with the profile itself at M:\ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile.

I have 6 POP3 email addresses (ISP provided) and 4 IMAP ones
(gmail/outlook). All the mails from POP3 are filtered into "Local
Folders" which has an array of sub-folders. I manually move emails from
the IMAP accounts on the rare occasion I need to.

I realize I need to install TB locally on each of the three PC's, but
how do I point each installation to my current mail-store and account
details in a common shared profile accessible from each of the PC's?

Any guidance appreciated.

--

Martin Leist
mar...@leist.co.uk

[NFN Smith]

Martin Leist wrote:

>
> I'm looking for some guidance in moving from Thunderbird Portable 60.0.1
> 32-bit on Windows 10 to standard Thunderbird 68.6.
>
> I've been happily using TB portable for years, but want to upgrade to
> the newer version which is not yet available in portable format.

I'm assuming that you're using the copy that comes from
portableapps.com. For some reason, the maintainer there is putting out
only the betas that correspond with new Firefox releases, and not the
versions that are essentially Firefox ESR, even if he's releasing
Firefox ESR versions.

I believe that there's also other sites that have portable packaging for
Thunderbird, but I don't have any experience with them to know if
they're trustworthy. I do trust pendriveapps.com, but for Thunderbird,
their links resolve to portableapps.com. Thus, your current quandary of
having to choose between the aged 60.9.1 or the beta of Thunderbird 74.0.

> I only
> use the portable version so I can access my profile/mail-store from any
> of three PC's (all Win 10 Home 64bit) - one at at time. The profile and
> TB itself is stored on a shared network drive (M:\ThunderbirdPortable\)
> with the profile itself at M:\ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile.
>
> I have 6 POP3 email addresses (ISP provided) and 4 IMAP ones
> (gmail/outlook). All the mails from POP3 are filtered into "Local
> Folders" which has an array of sub-folders. I manually move emails from
> the IMAP accounts on the rare occasion I need to.

With Thunderbird, there's essentially two sets of data to account for --
your mail stores, and then everything else, including your server
configs, your personal preference settings (including extensions,
dictionaries, message filters, etc.) and your address books. Mail stores
can be shared (via IMAP) but the other stuff is all local.

For what you're doing, I think you really need to consider moving all
your connections to IMAP, as IMAP is designed for this kind of thing,
where you need access to the same message content (including folder
layouts) from multiple devices. Get your mail traffic moved up to the
server(s), and you've largely solved the the first of the two questions,
of handling your mail archives. In this view, the better use of Local
Folders would be stuff that you *really* need to have locally (e.g.,
using a laptop when you're working without a connection to the server).
The other primary benefits of Local Folders would be storing stuff you
want to keep if have more than server quotas allow.

If you're going to be moving data around, then I strongly urge you to
take a look at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird ,
so that you know where all the components are within your profile.

For your non-mail data, it may be a pain given the number of accounts
that you have, but you may want to do your server configs and personal
prefs settings by hand, rather than trying to move data from your
existing configurations. Extensions can be reinstalled easily. Most of
your prefs are stored in your prefs.js file, and if you're shuffling
connections, I think it unwise to try transfer that file to new configs,
unless you've totally converted from POP to IMAP, first. I think a
better approach is to go to the config editor on your portable setup
(Tools -> Options - General -> Config Editor), and note which
preferences are shown in boldfaced text (i.e., non-default), and use
that as a reference for what tweaks you need to make. Don't add anything
new, and do as much as you can from the UI, but that can also help you
find something that you might miss otherwise. Filters (if you have any)
are also something that

I do think it easier to create new accounts with the account manager
than trying to transfer settings. The setup wizard is pretty good at
being able to figure out settings -- all you have to do is specify an
IMAP account, and then give it a user ID and password, and it will
generally get the rest for you. If you have to resort to manual
configs, besides user ID and password, the other config settings you
need are generally port ID, and what kind of encryption (and if SSL is
in the loop, "none" is what you want). The wizard will also take care of
configuring outbound connections over SMTP.

For moving your address book(s) you want to copy abook.mab, abook-1.map
to the new profile. For reference, check here:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_address_books_between_profiles

For an installed copy of Thunderbird, the normal location is
%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles, and then a folder with the actual name
of the profile. The default profile is normally located in
Profiles\[salt].default (where [salt] is a random 8 character string).

For stuff that you have in Local Folders, I would move as much of that
as possible to servers (even if temporarily, just while you're moving
stuff around -- you can download and re-store to Local Folders later).
For stuff that really needs to stay in Local Folders, just to be on the
safe side, I would consider moving everything you want to keep to a
sub-folder, named something like "Transfer". Then copy the Transfer
folder from the old profile to the Local Folders folder in new profile.

One item of caution -- before you do any kind of tinkering at folder or
file level, make sure you have made backups of your profile.
Additionally, don't do any kind of tinkering with any instance of
Thunderbird open.

> I realize I need to install TB locally on each of the three PC's, but
> how do I point each installation to my current mail-store and account
> details in a common shared profile accessible from each of the PC's?

That's doable, but dangerous, and I don't encourage that. At the very
least you need to make sure that you don't have multiple instances of
Thunderbird trying to access the same profile at the same time.
Additionally, as with Firefox, Thunderbird profiles are not backward
compatible. In the ESR branch, it may be safe(r) to access a profile
from both 68.2 and 68.3, but when the next ESR rotation comes and
updates to the next version (78.x, I think), then you also run a risk of
data corruption if one instance upgrades Thunderbird (and the underlying
data), and then you try to access that profile with another instance
that hasn't upgraded.

Overall, even though it's technically possible to hack at your configs
and profiles to do what you want to do, you're way beyond anything that
Thunderbird was designed to support. I'm going to suggest that you
really want to go back and try to work within the design expectations
and constraints. Unfortunately, you've done enough over the years that
your personal workflows will make it difficult to make that transition.
However, at this point, the longer you continue with trying to work with
hacked processes, the more difficult it will be (your time and effort)
to sustain them, and I'm suggesting that it's better to transition back
to a more normal setup now, than trying to keep the odd setups running.

In other words, I encourage you to re-think your approach, so that
you're working within Thunderbird's design, rather than fighting against
it. If you want access from multiple computers, use IMAP, and don't try
to get multiple instances of Thunderbird to share the same data.


BTW, I won't say that there isn't a place for using POP.

My personal setup is a hybrid, where I still POP on my primary computer,
and where I keep all my mail archives (some dating back 25+ years). On
all my other mail configs (including multiple clients installed on that
computer, as well as other computers and my phone), I configure access
via IMAP. On the POP connection, I use the mail retention settings to
keep mail on the server for two weeks, and that allows all the IMAP
connections to see all the most recent mail. For any mail that I send
from the IMAP connections, I have to remember to move copies from the
Sent folder to the Inbox, so that they get downloaded to the POP
connection for permanent filing. Plus with the POP setup, all my mail
archives are included as a part of my normal backup procedures.

With this approach, I have access to all my current mail from any
computer, client or profile that I want, and if I need stuff that's
older, it's all in the POP profile on the primary computer, including no
duplication of storage.

Smith

[😉 Good Guy 😉]

On 18/03/2020 11:56, Martin Leist wrote:

I realize I need to install TB locally on each of the three PC's, but how do I point each installation to my current mail-store and account details in a common shared profile accessible from each of the PC's?

If you go to the server settings page, there is an option to point to your local folders.

--

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