How-To

How to Manually Backup Thunderbird Emails and Profiles

By Austin

Last Updated on June 2, 2021

Mozilla’s Thunderbird handles emails on the desktop like a champ, but it doesn’t have a built-in backup feature. Here’s how to manually back up your messages.

Mozilla’s Thunderbird handles emails on the desktop like a champ, but it doesn’t have any built-in backup tools. So if something goes wrong or you need to move your profile to another computer, you’ll need a backup. You have two options — use a third-party utility or manually back them up. Here’s how to do the latter.

Manually Backup Thunderbird Emails

Open up Start Menu or Windows Explorer and browse to %appdata%.

The full path will be C:\Users\username\Appdata\Roaming  on most Windows installations. Scroll down and find the Thunderbird folder.

If you don’t see the AppData folder, make sure you have Show Hidden Files, Folder, and Drives unchecked in Folder Options.

Right-click the Thunderbird and select Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder.

Wait a few minutes for your Thunderbird folder to be copied and compressed into a zip archive. Your original folder will remain exactly where it was; the zip file is just a copy.

Now you have Thunderbird completely backed up! So if something happens, all you need to know is how to restore from the backup.