`thunderbird` loses accounts on update

[lx4r]

I have installed Thunderbird via the extras bucket. Every time I update Thunderbird via Scoop all accounts I added are lost and I have to add them again. Also Thunderbird keeps asking whether the user wants to set it as the default email application upon every startup (that doesn't bother me, just thought it could be helpful 😇 ).
(Sorry for not adding more details but I just don't know which information could help to fix this.)

What can I do to persist my email accounts across updates of Thunderbird?
Thanks in advance for the help. :)

[mads256h]

Yeah i have the same issue. Thunderbird on scoop is worthless if it doesn't retain configuration from version to version.

[joegreene]

DISCLAIMER: I don't have thunderbird installed via scoop.

Not sure if this makes the difference but I noticed that thunderbird-portable has a persist property for the profile folder whereas thunderbird does not. Which one are you guys using?

Reference:

• thunderbird-portable
• thunderbird

Side note: This PR describes the history behind why both exist.

[mads256h]

I'm using the thunderbird one.

[lx4r]

I'm also using the thunderbird package.

[joegreene]

If you haven't yet you guys might want to try using thuderbird-portable instead. Hopefully that gets around the problem for now.

As for the actual problem at hand: I'm not really sure what causes it unfortunately. I remember having similar issues with firefox when I tried installing it via scoop. I know thunderbird utilizes the profiles folder located at %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles though.

Some conjecture:
Maybe each profile folder in %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles is in some way tied to each Thunderbird application install? If that's the case, and because scoop simply does a move/replace (instead of modifying a current install like the Thunderbird installer does), profiles could be becoming unrecognizable. Therefore, scoop's thunderbird could be assuming none exist which means each new install will prompt you to import new profiles.

[lx4r]

@joegreene Thanks for the recommendation. I am now using thunderbird-portable and I tested updating it via scoop update -f thunderbird-portable and it didn't lose the profile 👍 .

I can also confirm that thunderbird uses %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles and (at least on my machine) creates a new profile after each update. In newer versions it has begun to show a popup telling the user that a new profile has been created.

[EDIT]: I can now confirm that the configuration survived a non-forced update of thunderbird-portable (68.9.0 -> 68.10.0).

[joegreene]

Thanks for the update @lx4r and I'm glad it's become a viable option. Does using thunderbird-portable work for you too, @mads256h?

In any case, I hope there's a way to fix thunderbird so it can retain profiles too. Perhaps link stuff from %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles to the persist folder? Seems like too much of a hack to get working though, so maybe not that. Otherwise, it seems like more of an annoyance to use than anything else.

Side Note: This issue should be renamed to specify that thunderbird has the issue, not thunderbird-portable. E.g. "thunderbird loses accounts on update".

[teohhanhui]

See #4377 (comment) for the real cause.

[raycheung]

I'm using thunderbird and having this issue. My current workaround is right after the upgrade, start the app with thunderbird -p in command-prompt and select the previous profile.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[HUMORCE]

discuss here: #4377