File structure within Thunderbird profile

[EdGordon007]

I have been having problems moving a Thunderbird profile from one computer to another. I need to reinstall the operating system, and naturally Thunderbird will be wiped out. I need to preserve my profile in order to move it to a newly-downloaded Thunderbird. (Unless I misunderstand what one needs to do to preserve address books and e-mails when this happens.)

In the profile which I can see, there are many SBD folders which are used for filing e-mail I want to keep. But these folders are empty. Along with these folders, however, are the text files containing the e-mail messages, along with MSF files for each folder. However, they are not stored within the SBD folders.

Should the SBD folders actually contain these text files and MSF files? If so, should I just manually move these files into the SBD folders?

Thanks for any information you can provide.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Based on the test we just did,

1. The folders should contain data files (i.e. two files per mail storage folder - text file with the data and its corresponidng MSF).
2. If you have all the files at the root of the profile, and the subfolders are empty, Thunderbird will start normally. Side effect is that all nested folders (more than one level deep) end up at the same level with inbox (i.e attached to the root). However, if you just drag them with a mouse, Thunderbird moves the files automatically; generally, this is not a significant issue.

Based on the above I suggest that you just copy the folder as it is, then start Thunderbird and make the adjustments as required - there would not be many.