thunderbird configuration file path or location

Question

Not having Windows, where precisely are the configuration files for a specific server located?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Thunderbird/Thunderbird_Configuration_Files

isn't terribly helpful in relation to Windows 10:

Warning: The content of this article may be out of date. It was imported from mozilla.org.

This is a path which I can specify to grab the file?

%appdata%\thunderbird\profiles\%yourprofile%\prefs.js

https://superuser.com/a/725791/55747

Solution

Path

Your general path for Thunderbird seems correct:

%appdata%\thunderbird\profiles\[profile-name]

This should be currently valid for both Windows 7 and Windows 10.

Be aware that [profile-name] (above) and %yourprofile% (from the second question linked) are merely place holders in this context. You will generally have to substitute in the actual Thunderbird profile name (e.g. something like 0b7zdi0x.default).

Note, however, %appdata% is a real, correct Windows system variable (so you can include it as-is).

Files

I can't speak to the accuracy of either link, unfortunately (i.e. if this is exactly what you want) but from casual observation:

• The first link is correct in that none of the listed files/folders exist by default.

• The files from the second link do exist in the location specified (including %appdata%\thunderbird\profiles\[profile-name]\prefs.js).

That said, prefs.js is an automatically updated file apparently based on about:config settings and is at least partially overwritten by Thunderbird regularly. It also has some unique values depending on the preference entry. So it's probably better for reading (rather than setting) preferences.

Comments

[Thufir]

would I be able to send prefs.js to another computer and load up with those preferences, in order to test mail server settings?

[Anaksunaman]

Perhaps, but my suspicion would be this probably wouldn't work well unless the two installations were essentially mirrors of each other. prefs.js apparently can have a large number of subtle differences between installations (even by just having a greater or fewer number of preference entries).

[Thufir]

okay. would it be useful for finding and extracting imap, pop, smtp settings?

[Anaksunaman]

Yes, I would think so. It seems to have all that data, short of passwords.

[Ron Piggott]

Can Thunderbird files be stored on a Linux server for access from multiple sources? (Instead of imap)