I was switching PCs and one was "probably" not shut down properly.
When I plugged in my portable drive containing portable apps and clicking on Mozilla Thunderbird, Thunderbird wanted to create a new account as if the old one does not exist.
I can go directly to the ThunderbirdPortable/App/Thunderbird/Thurderbird.exe and get my email this way but not by bringing up the portable app and clicking on Mozilla Thunderbird. It wants to create a new account.
How do I fix this?
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If you run thunderbird.exe directly, you're running Thunderbird in standard local mode and using the settings and mail store on the local PC, not the one on your portable device.
If you did an unsafe exit, pulling your drive while Thunderbird is running, it's likely you corrupted your main settings file with all your account details in it (prefs.js). You can likely restore it from a recent backup. It's in ThunderbirdPortable\Data\settings. Backup the one that is there before restoring.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I happened to have a backup of my profile and copied the pref file over which solved the problem.
I was not using a local copy but the thunderbird.exe on my portable drive to get my email after thunderbirdportable quit working together. I am confused but I got it working as it should.
If you run thunderbird.exe it runs as if its an installed copy of Thunderbird using the settings and email store on the local computer. It works this way regardless of where thunderbird.exe resides. You must run ThunderbirdPortable.exe to get it running in portable mode.
Glad it's working again.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!