Thunderbird: Change location - how it works

Thunderbird saves your emails, contacts and appointments in your profile folder. You can also change this location and save your data on another hard drive, for example. This practical tip explains how this works and where you can find your profile folder.

Thunderbird: Change location for mail profile

You cannot change the location of your profile via the Thunderbird settings. Instead, you have to do a little trick:

1. Quit Thunderbird.
2. Copy your profile folder to the desired location on your PC. By default you will find it in the path "User \ Name \ AppData \ Roaming \ Thunderbird \ Profiles \ xxxx.default". Replace the "Name" section with your current user name.
3. Then press the key combination [Windows] + [R]. In the Run dialog, enter the command "Thunderbird.exe -p".
4. The Thunderbird account management opens. Here click on "Create Profile" and enter any name for your Thunderbird account in the first field.
5. Click the "Select folder" button and navigate in Explorer to the profile folder you just copied.
6. Finally save your settings via "Finish". Thunderbird automatically loads the new profile and saves your data in the new folder.