Migrating Thunderbird email from one Windows environment to another

Factual Questions
1

I’m shifting allthegood’s computing environment from a Windows 7 virtual machine to a Windows 10 setup.

Her email is handled by Thunderbird. She’s not in love with it but she likes that it grabs email from several different accounts instead of haivng to deal with four or five different web mail environments. Anyway, in Windows 7 it’s all there and divided into zillions of folders; it’s IMAP email not POP so it’s stored on the email servers, but I guess it links and synchronizes with local copies (I think she can read old email while offline, for instance).

I thought I was going the right thing by diving into the AppData hidden folder on her Windows 7 and bringing over the Mozilla and Thunderbird folders. Then installed Thunderbird on Windows 10, opened it and… “hello, please enter your name and account information”…

I suppose it is possible that after I do so, for each of her accounts, all those emails will pop right up and their folders become visible, but it’s got me worried. (I haven’t proceeded since I’ll need her to enter all her passwords and should probably dive into Windows 7 and copy down all the server information stuff).

Factual Questions, since I’m asking for process instructions from anyone who’s done this and can walk me through it.

2

This video might be all you need to see it done (12 minutes long including some intro fluff for a couple minutes):

3

Looks pretty straightforward!

I’ll go in when she’s not using it and implement this.

I know that I didn’t go into AppData\Remote, I moved what was in AppData\Local

(which is good… when you’re checking instructions, you don’t want them telling you to do what you already did that didn’t work when you did it!)

4

I don’t know if this was in the video, but I used this plugin: ImportExportTools NG :: Add-ons for Thunderbird
(I also use it for backups)

5

Success!

6

Thank you!!!