Hello,
a couple of weeks ago I decided to move from Eudora to Thunderbird Portable.
As a first step I installed it on my internal D: drive.
For the last two weeks I've been using TP, learning about it and tuning it for my needs.
Today I've decided to move it to my USB flash drive (M: is the drive letter). I've simply copied the full D:\"myPath"\ThunderbirdPortable\ folder to M:\"anotherPath"\ThunderbirdPortable\
Then I launched the application from the new location. Something strange happens, it looks like it doesn't keep the full profile.
For instance, I have seven "Favorite folders": only two of them are kept.
Furthermore, about 30% of .msf files result having 0 byte size and each of them is rebuilt when I click on its folder.
I've checked the .msf file size and it is ok when I copy the application: it is TP itself that "resets" those .msf file when I start it for the first time.
I've tried copying the application both to an external HD and even in D: (the internal disk) itself, in a different location.
But the result is the same: whenever I copy the application folder, the new instance doesn't keep the whole profile (some Favorite folders and some recent folders are kept, other ones are lost) and about 30% of .msf files are null (and need to be rebuilt from within the application).
Please, note that when I create a new application copy and launch it for the first time, it takes a long time (even from the internal disk) to start, and I guess it does a load of work, such as resetting several .msf files 
I've seen that my ThunderbirdPortableSettings.ini file contains this entry:
LastProfileDirectory=D:\conBackup\gruppiDiFileCorrelati\portableApplications\ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile
and I wouldn't expect D: to be hardwired into that file. I've tried to change it manually to match a new instance' profile path, but it didn't help.
Unfortunately, I cannot keep using TP if I cannot solve this problem, so I really hope someone can help me.
Thanks in advance for your time.
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The relative path to the TBP directory needs to remain the same as you move between drives or it loses some functionality. FFP does this, too (though it only loses mime type associations).
1. Pick a relative path and stay with it
2. Delete ALL your .msf files
3. Adjust your prefs.js to set the paths to where things are now for all your accounts
4. Delete your ThunderbirdPortableSettings.ini file
5. Start it back up
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
John,
This might be a good thing to note somewhere.
What you seem to be saying is that if copy my TBP from work to home I could have some problems.
Work:
C:\documents and settings\tclark\my documents\pa\thuderbirdportable
to
Home:
C:\documents and settings\tim\my documents\pa\thuderbirdportable.
This is just an example but it is not what I would have expected.
In a real life situation I am intending to move TB and FF from:
C:\documents and settings\tclark\desktop\emergencystuff\pa\thuderbirdportable
and
C:\documents and settings\tclark\desktop\emergencystuff\pa\firefoxportable
to:
C:\documents and settings\tclark\my documents\portable\thuderbirdportable
and
C:\documents and settings\tclark\my documents\portable\firefoxportable
Now I'm concerned that I might break something.
From your statement above I think FFP will be okay, but I'm not sure about TBP.
No where in my readings have I picked up that the path when moving portable apps should always be:
[variable]x:\[stable]abc\[stable]def\[stable]ghi\firefoxportable.
This would imply that coping FFP or TBP from the flash drive to the hard drive would "generally" be a bad idea.
If this is the case it should be noted somewhere don't you think?
If this is not the case, and I have misunderstood [which is very possible] please clarify.
Thanks in advance.
Tim
(\__/)(='.'=)(}>
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
This is only a guess, actually. The apps are made to be installed in a single location and stay there (X:\PortableApps\)... generally a flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod, network share, etc. Moving them around between entirely different paths may break certain things on certain apps. This is not part of the testing procedure. Some things, logically, would of course break (for instance... mimetypes in FFP are full paths with drive letters updated to other apps... if you move it to another path, it's gonna fail).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I've tried to move TBP from
D:\"myPath"\ThunderbirdPortable
to
K:\"myPath"\ThunderbirdPortable
(thus the very same path, only the drive letter changes) and it still loses the same pieces of profile (for instance, only two favorite folders are kept, out of five).
Does it mean that also the drive letter must be kept the same?
I have hundreds of mail folders/subfolders and some complete path names are next to the max Windows' limit for full path name length (if I add a few letters to "myPath", Windows does not even allow me to copy the folder). Can this be an issue?
Thanks in advance.
That could certainly be part of it. Having 100-deep subfolders will definitely cause issues. There are max folder lengths in Windows but there are also max folder lengths internally within applications. OpenOffice.org can't handle a path longer than about 255 in some instances, so the OO launcher checks for this. I have no idea what Thunderbird's internal path length is but didn't figure we'd hit it since the profile is usually in something like C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Thunderbird\profiles\kjhsdfkj.default\ so X:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile is short by comparison.
I don't think I'll ever quite understand the whole million subfolder deep thing some people do. Someone actually broke several apps by keeping them in some weird folder like X:\Applications\PortablePrograms\Apps\$100\MyStuff\AppNamePortable\Version2002\... etc. And, yes, the $100 was in there.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
My drive letter changes when I use my hard drive, which has PortableApps on it, at school. I lose all my messages when I use my hard drive at school. Pretty annoying.
Go to the Settings folder in the Data directory, find the .ini file, change the absolute directory to a relative directory. This is not permanent, however, because TBP changes it back to absolute once it runs. So I wrote a batch file that fixes it and then runs TBP.
This won't help any of the issues in this thread. As has been stated more than once, Thunderbird Portable itself uses this file to keep track of the last launch and updates the files in Thunderbird accordingly. Messing with this file will mess up TBP.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!