I've been running Thunderbird happily, and apparently cluelessly, on Suse 9.1. I have two mail accounts. One for my wife and kids, and one for me. I thought I had it set up so that my wife, my kids and I could see their account, and only I could see mine. Of course, I can't log in as my kids, so I just verified that they could get mail when I set it up, and went on my way.

A few days back, my wife asked how she could see a particular email. To my chagrin, she couldn't see it. I came here, and found a description of how to enable multiple "identities" to see the same account - for Tbird 0.7 and more recent. That is when I discovered I had 0.5, and not 1.0. Rather than check and see if I could find a 1.0 rpm, I decided to see if I could install Thunderbird the way the developers seem to assume - by uncompressing the folder.

So, I downloaded 1.0, uncompressed it, and copied it to a folder parallel to 0.5. I set my "local folder" path to the same as for the 0.5. The folders appear, but there is no mail in them. How do I get the actual mail messages from my 0.5 account to appear in 1.0? And, how do I make sure they are mapped to the right accounts?

And one little thing. How do I get a Thunderbird icon to appear in my KDE menu, like I have for Firefox?

Thanks in advance. (And, I hope I wasn't too wordy explaining what I can't figure out.)

You probably do not have all your email in the "local folders." I had similar confusion when upgrading from 0.5 to 0.8. Go into Tools >> Account Settings, choose "Server Settings" under your account name, and look at "Local Directory" at the bottom. (I missed this on my computer, because the default window size was too small! If you don't see it, maximize the pop-up window.) Both your "Local Directory" for your account and your global "Local Folders" need to match between versions 0.5 and 1.0. That should get you all your email.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot this weekend!

Not only didn't it work, now I really screwed myself. I renamed the parent folder within 1.0 for my email provider account, and the parent folder for my family's. Now I can't see email in either version. If I poke around in the folders, I can see things that Konqueror labels as email, but I don't know how it knows, so I can't copy the lot off to someplace.

I'm not sure what you mean by "email provider account." If you give the exact field name that Thunderbird uses and the menu/submenu in which you made the change, I'm sure I can help you get your mail back and working the way your want. I.e., did you change the "Account Name" found in Tools >> Account Settings, the "Local Directory" in Tools >> Account Settings >> [username] >> Server Settings, or the "Local Directory" in Tools >> Account Settings >> Local Folders?

Ok, I hope you can help! I certainlay greatly appreciate your help and efforts. I have backed up the mess I currently have, so I can always get back to that, if there is some conceivable reason.

In 1.0, I selected Edit->account settings. I set the local folder Local Directory to the directory one level up from the local folder for 0.5, namely, /home/dad/.thunderbird/default/thwfbm86.slt/Mail. That made the directory structure that I see in 0.5 show up in 1.0, with three caveats. One: no mail was in the directories Two (and here I must go by memory): the directory structure did not contain subdirectories. Three: The root directory for one tree was pop3.pcisys.net and the other was pop.pcisys.net. Those names came from the 0.5 directory structure. (pcisys is my provider).

So, within 1.0, I right clicked, and selected to rename the top level directory trees for the two trees that looked like my 0.5 directory trees. That is when my mail disappeared from 0.5.

Yes, it was particularly stupid not to back things up first. My only defense is that I was rushing because I was pumped up on adrenalin from the Eagles game, irritated by the Steelers game, and hurrying between kids monopolizing the computer for school work.

I must admit that I'm confused. I'm not sure why you renamed the folder directly or chose the local folders path in 1.0 that you did, but I'm really baffled at the fact that a change made in 1.0 affected 0.5, but not in the same way. Can you get your mail back in 0.5 by renaming the folders you changed back to their original names? If so, I would do that--get everything back to the way it was in 0.5 before you started the upgrade process--and uninstall 1.0. Perhaps there's a bug in 1.0 (or 0.5 for that matter) and a proper reinstall of 1.0 would be in order before any further messing around. It will also allow you to backup the original settings (if you can get back to them) before you do any further fiddling.

As for your directory structure, let me give you the layout of my email directories for my account and my wife's in Thunderbird that has worked through a couple successful upgrades, and maybe that will help you:

Our mail is stored in /home/username/.thunderbird/.../Mail/

That folder contains the following folders:
mail.domainname.com [inbox, sent, junk, etc. for my account]
mail.domainname-01.com [inbox, sent, junk, etc. for my wife's account]
Local Folders [all my other folders storing mail on my hard drive]
In Local Folders I have "Kris" and "Colleen" as the parent directories holding the mail folders for each of us

Under Account Settings >> Kris >> Server Settings >> Local Directory I have /home/username/.thunderbird/.../Mail/mail.domainname.com
Under Account Settings >> Colleen >> Server Settings >> Local Directory I have /home/username/.thunderbird/.../Mail/mail.domainname-01.com
Under Account Settings >> Local Folders Local Directory I have /home/username/.thunderbird/.../Mail/Local Folders

As long as thunderbird is set up this way, and I don't move or rename my folders in Konqueror, any version of thunderbird (when I had more than 1) recognizes all my mail, and any mail moved or deleted in one version is the same in another. If your system is set up the same way, it should work. If it doesn't, I have no idea what the problem is. Hope you get it figured out.

I'm afraid I did try to rename things back, but there is always the chance I screwed that up in my shock. I'll give it another shot this weekend.

I'm also baffled that it appears to have deleted the mail. If I had thought such an action might remove the mail, I'd have backed it up first. Clearly, I wasn't thinking too clearly, but even so, a rename should have done nothing to the contents. I'm hopeful that things just got moved to someplace obscure.

I have succeeded, to a point. I removed Tbird 0.5. I removed all Tbird references in all users directories, except in the menu. I exported my address book on the Windows side, which is only slightly out-of-date, and I copied all my mail on the Windows side to a safe folder.

I then set up my mail accounts, and one for my wife. I gave her access to the family mail, and the appropriate permissions. I added her "identity". I then had her log in, and lo and behold, she could see the right mail!

So, I seem to have lost about two months of mail, and one important address, but otherwise, I am good to go!

Thank you.