Thunderbird - How to Reset Email Client Back to Stock

 

Intro:

I have rewritten this article to include a link to another article that I wrote on correcting email subjects that do not match the correspondents. Click here for that article.

If you need to wipe the profiles folder for any reason, read below for how to do it.

Also be sure to read my other article on how to set default sorting preferences before setting up your profile and adding an email address or you'll be doing this process all over again.

Profile Location:

The profiles are kept in the following folder:

%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles

However if you only deleted the folders inside of "Profiles", you'd receive an error that your profile doesn't exist when you try to load Thunderbird. This is because it's looking at "%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\profiles.ini" which is telling it where your actual profile folder is.

Solution:

1. Close Thunderbird if running and delete the everything in the following folder:

%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\

2. Click here to learn how to set default sorting options before setting up your profile. If you set this after adding your email, you'll have to apply sorting options to each individual folder in your mailbox which will take too long.

3. If you followed the above article on default sorting options then you can add your email and setup your profile now.

PS:

You can force Thunderbird to show available profiles upon launch by changing the shortcut to match:

x32:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -p

x64:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -p

Conclusion:

Surprisingly there's no conclusion. It just works like it should.

👽