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Copying Thunderbird settings from Windows to Linux (or vice versa)

One of the benefits of cross-platform software such as the Thunderbird mail client is that its often quite easy to transfer data from one platform to another. The data that Thunderbird creates (that contains your account settings, downloaded emails, mail filters etc.) seems to be identical whichever platform you run it on.

Under Linux, the data files live in "~/.thunderbird/". Under Windows 7, I found my settings in "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\". I suspect this location might move around a bit from one version of Windows to another. Searching for profiles.ini might be the best bet if you're trying to locate an existing installation.

So, once I had located the data files, all I had to do was mount the windows partition under Linux, and copy "profiles.ini" and the "Profiles" directory from the Windows location to "~/.thunderbird/".

You could also use this method to transfer your Thunderbird settings from one computer to another.

By ff

Systems software engineer with interests in C/C++/Rust on Linux, electronic music and games.

4 replies on “Copying Thunderbird settings from Windows to Linux (or vice versa)”

Hi,
After new installation in dual boot win8.1/64 and Linux Mint 18/64 in French.
All is OK, and Thunderbird is in French.
I copy "profiles.ini" and the "Profiles" directory from the Windows location to "~/Thunderbird/".
and.......Thunderbird is in English! and runs properly with all my data's and so on !
My question is what to do to turn back in French......
good day

A big thank you to both Francis and Gerard for their respective comments which helped me to successfully move all my Thunderbird emails from Windows over to Linux. 🙂

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