Meevy

Many of us use thunderbird to check E-mail. But is there any way to backup or restore the settings? So that if we uninstall the operating system and reinstall it fresh, we may use the same settings. Also there would be no need for us to configure our email again and again.This can be achieved very easily. All the thunderbird settings are available in the directoryC:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\
For windows xp / 2000 =>
Start >> Run >> type %AppData% >> Thunderbird >> Profiles

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Thunderbird\Profiles\
For Windows 95/98/Me =>
Use windows explorer

Inside the profiles directory there would be a directory named xxxxxxxx.default (8 character name with an extension .default). This is the directory. Just save / copy this directory in some other safe place. This directory contains all your stuff your email accounts, passwords, address book entries,…. After doing a fresh installation of Windows and thunderbird, we can safely paste the directory in the same above said location.

After doing so, go to

C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Thunderbird
(for WinXP)

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Thunderbird
(for Win98)

There you can see a “profiles” file (looks like a notepad file). Open it. In the last line you may see

Path=Profiles/abcdefgh.default

Change it your profile name for example

Path=Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default

Save the file now and start thunderbird.

By doing this we need not configure email accounts again. All the previous settings will be restored without any change.

The same thing holds good for Firefox too. For firefox the settings will be available in

C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
(For windows xp / 2000)

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
(For Windows 95/98/Me)

Here all the plugins, extensions, bookmarks etc., will exist. We can take a backup of the xxxxxxxx.default directory available there.

Posted on May 30th, 2005 under technology • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback