Copy Thunderbird settings from Windows to Linux

[al_scott]

Hello folks.

I'm relatively new to Linux. I have created a dual boot setup on my PC, so I can run my existing Windows 2000 installation alongside my new Ubuntu Edgy OS.

I'd like to copy my Thunderbird profile from Windows to Ubuntu, but I can't work out an easy way to do it.

Does anyone know of a step by step guide do do this? or a utility perhaps?

I also need to do the same with Firefox. I presume the procedure is similar to Thunderbird.

Thanks!

Al

[sarc]

It's very simple, just copy your profile folder to a suitable location and tell Thunderbird to use it. Soe versione of Thunderbird and Firefox have a menu to choose the Profile folder, others use a command from the Console. It has been described in detail on a previous post, do a search on this forum.

[LPomfrey]

Go to C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\ on your windows partition and copy the folder called ########.default (where ######## is a random string.)
Now paste the folder into /home/[User Name]/.mozilla-thunderbird on your Ubuntu partition. (You could copy it to a CD/USB thumb drive etc. in between if necessary.)
Now open up the file called /home/[User Name]/.mozilla-thunderbird/profiles.ini in a text editor and change the line:

Path=xxxxxxx.default

(Where xxxxxxxx is again a random string.)
To:

Path=########.default

Where ######## is the random string in the folder you just copied across.

For Firefox you would do the same but using the directories C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Firefox\Profiles\ in Windows and /home/[User Name]/.mozilla/firefox in Ubuntu.


Alternatively, if you want to access them from Windows and Ubuntu, and keep the settings the same for both, copy the ######.default folders to a folder on a partition accessible by both Windows and Ubuntu (FAT32 etc.) and change the profile.ini files to the following:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=/where/you/copied/the/folders/to/#######.default

Note the IsRelative line has changed.
Remembering which one was the Firefox profile folder and which was the Thunderbird one obviously.

[DJ_Peng]

Please note that if you don't move the profile folder to a location on a new drive with exactly the same path you will do search and replace to update thelocations. You can get more iformation in Migrating settings to a new profile in the Mozilla Knowledge Base.

To access the profile manager in Thunderbird you will need to run

path/to/Thunderbird]/thunderbird -p

[Erlander]

Its a while since I did it but I'm sure all I did was to find the folder with the random string of characters in Documents & Settings/username/Application Data/Thunderbird/Profiles ,open the folder and copy its contents to a usb stick.

Then I took the usb stick to my Ubuntu pc and copied those files into a similar folder with a random string of characters as its name.

This moved all my emails, address book etc across.

Rob