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Moving and Restoring Mail in Mozilla

If you want to back up, restore or move your mail in Mozilla, this document will tell you how. Remember to back-up your profile before changing anything in it. That way, you get as many tries as you need to make it work. Also, close *all* mozilla windows when making these changes. Print this out if you need it - if you print from Mozilla it will format itself for printing automatically.

Before you do anything else, you need to find where your profile(s) are kept on the machines you are working on. Once you've found the profiles folder, find the folder for the account you want, and you can begin.

Files that have been backed up, especially to CD, may well have become read-only. Ensure that they are set to read-write before restoring them, otherwise you may lose data.

Mail has disappeared

The first thing to try is renaming prefs.js to something else, then renaming prefs.bak to prefs.js. Restart, and your mail may well be back. If not, follow "Restoring to same profile", below.

Moving mail between two machines / profiles

Inside your profile, there should be a folder called Mail, with subfolders for your various accounts. Simply copying everything accross won't work. One of the reasons lies in prefs.js which contains your mail settings. The locations of the various mailboxes are absolute instead of relative. You have two options here - either enter your settings again, or try to hand-edit prefs.js to the new location. Both methods work, which one you use is a matter for personal preference. The other thing that can cause problems is copying over the index files (the ones called *.msf). This can cause problems, and they will be re-created, so leave them behind.

Local Folders

Another way is to copy the mailbox files into the Local Folders account, and move them from there into the place they are wanted. I have not personally verified this method.

Restoring to same profile

The procedures for restoring to the same profile are much the same as those for moving to a different profile. You are more likely to encounter one issue though: When re-creating the accounts, new folders may be created. For example, if you had pop.myisp.net, you will get pop.myisp-1.net, and so on. If you have several addresses set up with the same ISP, you will have several of these folders anyway. It can take a bit of guesswork to decide which folders to use.

Upgrading / Downgrading Mozilla

When upgrading Mozilla, your profile should be fine, even with uninstalling. Make a backup if it reassures you. Downgrading can be more of a problem - changes to incorporate new features, such as the junk mail controls, mean that file formats change. These won't always work with older versions. For this reason, you shouldn't share a profile between two versions. Also, if you upgrade but may want to revert, use a new profile.

Mailnews hangs at certain points

This is usually down to a corrupted file in your profile. It may be called "XUL.mfl" , "XUL.mafsl" or "XUL Fastload File", depending on OS. Deleting this should fix it. It will be automatically re-generated when you next start Mozilla, so there's no dataloss.

Thunderbird

I haven't personally tested these techniques in Thunderbird, but I am told that they work.

Importing from other mail programs

Select Tools > Import from the Mailnews menu. If the program is not offered, and the program to be imported from uses mbox, then using the above techniques may work.

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