A parent directory of the directory specified in the Local Directory setting is already used by the (email user) account. Please pick a different director

[king-daddy]

I am moving my data from Windows XP computer to new Windows-7 machine.
I had to update Thunderbird 24 to Thunderbird 33 to enable my Lightning Add on.

I have 6 email accounts serviced by Thunderbird 24; 3 on earthlink.net.

I keep all my email and other personal data on a separate drive or partition. The root folder is "email" with respective
sub-folders.

After I copied the email folder to new respective machine,
...and my Thunderbird profile data to the new machine, I performed the "View setting for this account" browse to the
respective folder in the "Email folder tree".

All worked well as my ample experience expected. My attempt to the next account did not go so well. It produced the
message:

"A parent directory of the directory specified in the Local Directory setting is already used by the (email user)
account. Please pick a different directory"

I have not been able to find a workaround for this issue.

Any suggestion?

[king-daddy]

Ignore.
I made a stupid mistake in not checking my first one. It did not go as well as I first percieved.
Sorry about that!
All is well now

Carl

[Wolf K.]

On 2014-12-15 1:48 PM, king-daddy wrote:
>
> I am moving my data from Windows XP computer to new Windows-7 machine.
> I had to update Thunderbird 24 to Thunderbird 33 to enable my Lightning
> Add on.
>
> I have 6 email accounts serviced by Thunderbird 24; 3 on earthlink.net.
>
> I keep all my email and other personal data on a separate drive or
> partition. The root folder is "email" with respective sub-folders.

I keep a _copy_ of the e-mail etc on a separate drive.

> After I copied the email folder to new respective machine,
> ...and my Thunderbird profile data to the new machine, I performed the
> "View setting for this account" browse to the respective folder in the
> "Email folder tree".
>
> All worked well as my ample experience expected. My attempt to the next
> account did not go so well. It produced the message:
>
> "A parent directory of the directory specified in the Local Directory
> setting is already used by the (email user) account. Please pick a
> different directory"
>
> I have not been able to find a workaround for this issue.
>
> Any suggestion?

This may work for you: When I've copied e-mail only, I copied the
"folders" in the respective account(s), first renaming them (eg Inbox
--> Joe-Inbox, or Inbox --> 2013-Inbox, or whatever was meaningful in
context). You must use Explorer for this, and Tbird must be shut down.
These files showed up as "folders" under the account(s) to which I
copied them. I did not copy the *.msf files, Tbird rebuilds these. If
you can use this trick, you will see the old e-mail folders as
subfolders in the accounts on the new machine.

Keep in mind that in Tbird "folder" is an ambiguous term. OTOH, it
refers the file that stores the messages, plus the associated *.msf
file. OTOH, it refers to a folder with subfolders. In your case, you'd
have to explore the Tbird folder tree in Explorer, not in Tbird, to find
out which is what. I assume that your Profile is set to point to the
/Mail folder on the separate drive. IMO, that's the root of the problem.
It seems to me that you've somehow messed up the references used by Tbird.

BTW, I don't use Local Folders. Each of my accounts is "top-level", with
its own Inbox, Junk, Sent, etc.

HTH, and good luck.

--
Best,
Wolf K.
kirkwood40.blogspot.ca