Merge/synchronize two Thunderbird installations

Question

I want to migrate/copy my Thunderbird from Windows 7 to Ubuntu, where I already set up another Thunderbird installation with some old and also some new accounts. To save me more configuration work, is it possible to just merge/synchronize the account settings and address books, so that the one on Ubuntu contains everything?

I have read access to the drive where Windows-Thunderbird is installed. However, I can't just copy old files and replace my current ones, as there are already other, new accounts set up I also need to keep.

Note that many of the accounts are POP3, so mails are saved on the disk, not in the cloud. I should copy them over too.

So in short: How do I merge and synchronize accounts created with Thunderbird easily?

Answer 1

The account details are all stored in the configuration data, which are saved in the text file prefs.js in the profile directory, so you can import parts of this from one system to another.

The relevant settings are the mail.account... and the mail.server... entries, but it is not as straightforward as copying and pasting.

• You first need to extract the server settings (mail.server...) from the system where they are defined.
• You then need to offset the sequence numbers so that they continue the sequence in the target system.
• You can now merge the entries into the target prefs.js.
• You next need to add mail.account.accountNN entries for the imported accounts.
• If there were mail.account.accountNN.identities in the source prefs.js, then both they and the corresponding mail.identity.id... entries will need to be extracted, renumbered and merged.
• You will need to add the new accounts to the mail.accountmanager.accounts entry and update mail.account.lastKey.

I think that is all that needs doing. Whether it is less work than entering the new accounts by hand will depend on the number involved.

I hope it goes without saying that both prefs.js files should be backed up first, and that Thunderbird should not be running while the files are being modified.