Thunderbird: Replace profile with one extracted from a backup

Helping a friend with a Win11 desktop PC.

Because restoring recent image backups did not fix her Win11 problem, I had to restore a backup of the C drive that was done in March 2025 when she first bought that PC. That resolved the Win11 problem. But now Tbird lost all of her email contacts.

I can extract Tbird's profile from a recent backup that was done in August 2026. Not sure if the name of 2026 profile will be identical to the name of the 2025 profile. If the names are different, Google Ai says to:
1. Insure Tbird is not runnng.
2. Delete the entire contents of the 2025 profile folder.
3. Paste the entire contents of the 2026 profile in the 2025 profile folder.

I asked Google: After I paste a copy of the 2026 profile folder in the correct location, couldn't I just rename the 2026 profile to the name used for the 2025 profile? Google said that would not work and that I should use the delete/paste method. What's the difference in doing it by deleting/pasting or renaming?

Or a better way?

I would mount the recent drive image and navigate to the Thunderbird profile folder.

Copy the contents of the mounted drive image TB profile folder to the TB profile location on the users drive.

I would google using the profile manager of Thunderbird. You can have multiple profiles at once, and select between them.
So I would keep the existing profile intact, use the profile manager to create a new profile, then copy the backup data into the new profile location.
Once you are happy with that, you can set the new profile as the default at Thunderbird launch, and then later delete the old profile if you want to, or just keep it for backup.

ref: using multiple profiles in Thunderbird

Banjoman301 said:

I would mount the recent drive image and navigate to the Thunderbird profile folder.

Copy the contents of the mounted drive image TB profile folder to the TB profile location on the users drive.

Click to expand...

That is what I initially planned to do. But if the name of the profile folder extracted from the backup is different from the name of the currently used profile folder, that became my question for this thread. Thanks.

AK6DN said:

I would google using the profile manager of Thunderbird. You can have multiple profiles at once, and select between them.
So I would keep the existing profile intact, use the profile manager to create a new profile, then copy the backup data into the new profile location.
Once you are happy with that, you can set the new profile as the default at Thunderbird launch, and then later delete the old profile if you want to, or just keep it for backup.

ref: using multiple profiles in Thunderbird

Click to expand...

I am investigating this approach. Thanks.

mck said:

That is what I initially planned to do. But if the name of the profile folder extracted from the backup is different from the name of the currently used profile folder, that became my question for this thread. Thanks.

Click to expand...

The profile names do not have to match.

Create a new profile, set it as the default, copy the profile data from the drive image to the new profile.

That's it.

The approach to solving the "Windows 11 problem" probably should have been an In-Place Upgrade, which reinstalls Windows without losing the user's apps and data, rather than restoring a year old backup.

Banjoman301 said:

The profile names do not have to match.

Create a new profile, set it as the default, copy the profile data from the drive image to the new profile.

That's it.

The approach to solving the "Windows 11 problem" probably should have been an In-Place Upgrade, which reinstalls Windows without losing the user's apps and data, rather than restoring a year old backup.

Click to expand...

Friend's data is on a separate D drive so no loss of data.
Will remember the In-Place Upgrade in the future. Thanks.

Because restoring recent image backups did not fix her Win11 problem, I had to restore a backup of the C drive that was done in March 2025 when she first bought that PC. That resolved the Win11 problem. But now Tbird lost all of her email contacts.

Click to expand...

A key thing to do before restoring a disk image (assuming that that might be what you mean by "a backup of the C drive") is to ensure you have backed up data that has changed since that image was created that would be otherwise overwritten.

Provided
a. That's possible (e.g. not if disk failed perhaps)
b. You know which data needs to be backed up.


Prepare for this and make life easier:
In the case of Thunderbird the profile folder - and other personal data- place this on a different partition or drive.

Then when restoring an image of C: you have less to consider.

dalchina said:

A key thing to do before restoring a disk image (assuming that that might be what you mean by "a backup of the C drive") is to ensure you have backed up data that has changed since that image was created that would be otherwise overwritten.

Provided
a. That's possible (e.g. not if disk failed perhaps)
b. You know which data needs to be backed up.


Prepare for this and make life easier:
In the case of Thunderbird the profile folder - and other personal data- place this on a different partition or drive.

Then when restoring an image of C: you have less to consider.

Click to expand...

Yes, wish I remembered to use Tbird to backup it's profile before restoring the March 2025 backup. Won't forget next time .
Thanks.

FWIW I store my actual Thunderbird profile data on my "E: DATA" drive, with all the rest of my data files.
I keep little to no personal data on C: itself

So my "C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\profiles.ini" file looks like this:

AK6DN said:

FWIW I store my actual Thunderbird profile data on my "E: DATA" drive, with all the rest of my data files.
I keep little to no personal data on C: itself

So my "C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\profiles.ini" file looks like this:

Code:

[InstallDFA666ED473]
Default=E:\Personal\Thunderbird\Profiles\twa22tpo.default

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=E:\Personal\Thunderbird\Profiles\twa22tpo.default
Default=1

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1
Version=2

Click to expand...

Mine is pretty much the same only the full profile is on the D: drive, that's my data drive. Anything I can arrange save data on my data drive is configured that way.

I received the following suggestion in the Thunderbird forum:

"If it is just the contacts, the easy solution is to copy two files: abook.sqlite and history.sqlite, from her old profile and paste them into her current profile. Doing more than necessary often causes problems."

Doing that resolved the problem.

Thanks to all who responded in this thread. Very much appreciated.