Transfer Thunderbird PC to MAC

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I need a bit of help in transferring a Thunderbird (2.0.0.24) profile from a PC (XPP) to Thunderbird (2.0.0.24) on a MAC Mini (Lion).
I first installed Thunderbird 14.0 on the Mini and the prescribed copying of the profile.default did not work. So, I thought that there might be too much of a disparity between 2.0.0.24 and 14.0 for the transfer to work. So, I downloaded 2.0.0.24 for the MAC and installed it and repeated the copying of the contents of the profile.default but no joy.
Have I missed something? I have done this on PCs often and had no problems. This is my first PC to MAC attempt.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
 

chscag

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First, Thunderbird is currently at version 15.0. I believe the Thunderbird PC profile is different than the profile used on the Mac - but I can't be sure of that.
I no longer have Thunderbird installed on my PC so I can't compare them one way or another. Thunderbird profiles on the Mac are located here:

Macintosh HD/Users/your user name/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/

Note, however, the user library folder is hidden in Lion and Mountain Lion. Also see the following Mozilla KB article regarding profiles: LINK
 
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mrplow and chscag, Thanks for responding. Yes, mrplow that is where I copied the CONTENTS of the profile.default folder from the PC. And chscag, I thought that the difference in versions might be the issue, also. That's why I reverted to version 2.0.0.24 on the MAC so the versions would be pretty much identical.
I have found several posts in various forums that state that all you have to do is copy the CONTENTS of the profile.default into the profile.default folder on the MAC and all would be well. Doesn't seem to be working for me.
 
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I did the same thing and it did not work. So any other way to migrate my files and emails? I'm getting so down here :(
 
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rhenium3, don't despair. I finally got it solved. It seems that Lion is reluctant to copy LARGE mail profiles. Here's what I finally did and it seems to have worked. I made sure that I was using the same version of Thunderbird on BOTH machines. In my case 2.0.0.24 (the last one that didn't attempt to do so much for me that I lost confidence in it). Then I cleaned out most of my mail folders of old, unnecessary messages. Keep in mind that deleting messages from, say your 'Inbox'. sends those messages to 'Trash', then 'Trash' must ALSO be emptied. Even after 'Trash' is emptied, the files are NOT cleaned out until you 'Compact Files' (under the 'File' menu selection). After I had gotten every folder in the Mail folder to a minimal size, I then attempted to copy the CONTENTS of the profile.default folder from the PC to the profile.default folder of the MAC and everything appears to have worked. If it didn't, I'll be back on this post with that information.
 
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So I found the problem. In Windows, there are actually two profiles for thunderbird. I was copying the wrong one.

Make sure you go to Users/username/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profile and NOT Users/username/AppData/Local/Thunderbird/Profile.

The Roaming profile copy and paste into the mac profile worked completely fine
 
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finding the right profile

Sorry to exhume this old thread but I just went through this and thought it might help someone else.
(Moving from Win7 to Mac ML.)

I first updated Tbird on the PC to their latest version, just to improve the chances that the email file formats would be similar.

To find the current profile go to Thunderbird > Help > Troubleshooting Info; from there you'll find a button that opens the folder containing your current profile. Works the same on Win and Mac.

I just copied all folder contents (making sure TBird was shut down on both machines). Launched TBird on the mac and it just worked! Over 10 years worth of email, about 1GB total; folder structures, server settings....

I was pleasantly surprised.
 

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