How do I backup Thunderbird mail and profile under Linux?
Q. How do I backup Thunderbird mail and profile? I am using Ubuntu Linux.
A. Thunderbird is simple to use and powerful email client with following features:
=> Safe, fast, and easy email
=> Intelligent spam filters
=> Quick message search
=> Customizable views etc
Mozilla thunderbird stores your email and profile setting in a special directory called ~/.mozilla-thunderbird i.e. /home/you/.mozilla-thunderbird/
All you have to do is backup this directory.
Task: Backup Thunderbird mail and profile
You need to backup thunderbird mail and profile to tape drive, use:
# tar zcvf /dev/st0 /home/you/.mozilla-thunderbird/
You need to backup thunderbird mail and profile to a /backup directory:
# tar zcvf /backup/email-vivek-22jan2007.tar.gz /home/vivek/.mozilla-thunderbird/
You can copy /backup/email-vivek-22jan2007.tar.gz file to a CD/DVD or USB pen.
Task: Restore Thunderbird mail and profile
Make sure Thunderbird is not running. Simply copy backup files from tape, USB pen or CD to your /home/you/.mozilla-thunderbird/ directory:
$ tar –zxvf /backup/email-vivek-22jan2007.tar.gz -C /home/vivek
Or just copy all files from USB pen/CD to ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/ directory.
A note for Windows XP/2003/Vista User
MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite and Netscape profiles.
This program is freeware and works on Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003 only. No Linux/UNIX version exists.
It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc. It's an easy way to do Firefox backup, Thunderbird backup. You can download this software here.
You can also follow these instructions - Move an existing profile or restore a backed up profile for Windows.
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Discussion on This FAQ
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March 15th, 2007 at 3:57 am
Great How to,,
thank you very much,,
God bless you
March 16th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Same here thanks for sharing nice stuff
God bless you
August 28th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Thanks so much! you have saved me so much hair pulling!
April 15th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Sorry, but I did that and still doesn’t work. It shows instantly my restored email messages and then they disappear.
There are 2 profiles of course, the restored one xxx.default and the new one zzz.default which is empty.
Should I copy the contents of xxx.default to zzz.default or it is able to recognize the new profiles?
I copied from a Gentoo linux machine to a FreeBSD one.
Thanx for your reply…
April 26th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
how to: backup on windows - restore same on linux
emigrate thunderbird from windows to linux