I want to migrate/copy my Thunderbird from Windows 7 to Ubuntu, where I already set up another Thunderbird installation with some old and also some new accounts. To save me more configuration work, is it possible to just merge/synchronize the account settings and address books, so that the one on Ubuntu contains everything?
I have read access to the drive where Windows-Thunderbird is installed. However, I can't just copy old files and replace my current ones, as there are already other, new accounts set up I also need to keep.
Note that many of the accounts are POP3, so mails are saved on the disk, not in the cloud. I should copy them over too.
So in short: How do I merge and synchronize accounts created with Thunderbird easily?
Best Answer
The account details are all stored in the configuration data, which are saved in the text file
prefs.js
in the profile directory, so you can import parts of this from one system to another.The relevant settings are the
mail.account...
and themail.server...
entries, but it is not as straightforward as copying and pasting.mail.server...
) from the system where they are defined.prefs.js
.mail.account.accountNN
entries for the imported accounts.mail.account.accountNN.identities
in the sourceprefs.js
, then both they and the correspondingmail.identity.id...
entries will need to be extracted, renumbered and merged.mail.accountmanager.accounts
entry and updatemail.account.lastKey
.I think that is all that needs doing. Whether it is less work than entering the new accounts by hand will depend on the number involved.
I hope it goes without saying that both
prefs.js
files should be backed up first, and that Thunderbird should not be running while the files are being modified.