I have to migrate my old Thunderbird environment from my dying 8GB U3 flash drive to a new Thunderbird environment on a new PortableApps platform on a new 16GB flash drive, and I'm looking for any pointers or advice before I get started.
My old Thunderbird is no longer functional, but I have the old Data and System folders and (so far) have no reason to expect them to be corrupted.
Here's how I got to this point.
I was happily using Portable Thunderbird on my old 8GB SanDisk U3 flash drive. I was blissfully unaware that SanDisk had abandoned U3 about a year or so ago. I got an unusual alert that there was a newer version of TB available. It was unusual in that the window it popped up in was different than it used to be, but it looked legit enough. So just to be safe, I backed up the System and Data folders. My guess as to what happened next was that the update wizard tried to upgrade my U3 TB to a PA version on my U3 platform, and it didn't work. That's only a guess and the best I can do because I have no idea if the two environments are significantly different or functionally identical or somewhere in between. At any rate the upgrade failed and TB was dead. Not knowing that SanDisk had abandoned U3, I decided to uninstall the broken TB and reinstall from U3's Download Central. So I uninstalled the old TB and set about reinstalling, which was when I discovered that U3 was no more and Download Central was now "WriteTheScoop.com" - not exactly helpful, although I can think of a few things I'd like to write about it. So what I have now is the latest and greatest fully functional PA brand of TB, 3.1.10 I guess, (I don't have it with me right this minute) on a brand new flashdrive, and a backup copy of the System and Data folders from my old U3 TB, and I desperately need to get the several hundred saved emails and folders, from that U3 environment into my new PA environment.
So should I expect this salvage job to be straightforward, challenging or impossible?
Thanks for any and all tips and pointers, not to mention commiseration.
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First, let me give you a hint for the future: the best way to get this done is to first do a search in the top right corner of this page.
There, you will find a link leading you to an old 2006 post that nevertheless should still be accurate about how to transfer your old U3 settings to the new portable Thunderbird.
As you said, you backed up your U3 profile which is good as this might not work because it could be outdated. But its worth a try.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Thanks Simeon:
Yep, I tried that, but I searched on "migrate u3" not on "transfer U3," so I didn't see the one you linked to. It looks promising - a whole lot better than what my search yielded.
That's pretty much what I was going to try, but I was going to be guessing all the way through. At least this will give me some direction.
I'll try it tonight and see how it goes.
Thanks again,
Ross
Well, it wasn't exactly like the link described, but it gave me enough information to get it done. I guess I had a different version than what John was referencing. I had no references to 'Stealth' anything - no Stealth folder under Exec, no StealthProfile directory, but I was able to figure out what I needed to look for. I also didn't have a user.js file at all, and in my prefs.js file, I didn't have any of the lines that John referenced. But, it worked pretty well once I got everything moved over. At first it couldn't read the abook.something file, but before I tackled that, I updated to 3.0.11, and when that was complete, the abook file problem had resolved itself. Now all that's left is to find out how to restore my calendar events.