How to Find Your Mozilla Thunderbird Profile Directory

When you launch Mozilla Thunderbird, all the messages are there, right in your mailbox. But it's great to know where on the disk they are (so you can back up your mailboxes, for example).

Find Your Mozilla Thunderbird Profile Directory

To locate and open the folder where Mozilla Thunderbird keeps your profile including settings and messages:

On Windows:

• Select Run... from the Start menu.
• Type "%appdata%" (without the quotes).
• Hit Return.
• Open the Thunderbird folder.
• Go to the Profiles folder.
• Now open the folder of your Mozilla Thunderbird profile (probably "********.default" where the '*'s stand for random characters) and the folder beneath it.

On Mac OS X:

• Open your home folder.
• Go to the Library folder.
• Open the Thunderbird and then the Profiles folders.
• Open your profile's directory (probably "********.default" where the '*'s stand for random characters).

On Linux:

• Go to the ".thunderbird" directory in your home "~" directory.
• Open the profile directory (probably "********.default" where the '*'s stand for random characters).

Now you can back up or move your Mozilla Thunderbird profile, or just archive specific folders.