Mac OS Ventura & Thunderbird

I had this problem and I solved it. You do not need to touch Thunderbird. Open Apple Security and Privacy and view the warning about Thunderbird to fix the problem. Here is the Apple info to get Thunderbird back:

View the app security settings on your Mac

By default, the security and privacy preferences of your Mac are set to allow apps from the App Store and identified developers. For additional security, you can chose to allow only apps from the App Store.

In System Preferences, click Security & Privacy, then click General. Click the lock and enter your password to make changes. Select App Store under the header “Allow apps downloaded from.”

I got the message that TB was corrupted, and re-installed as I read somewhere else. This causes your existing "profile" to be forgotten, and TB installs a new one. There is a way to re-attach your old profile and I will detail that here.

First, you will need to expose or open your 'Library' folder in Finder - you can also "Go" to that folder (google around if needed). All the action happens in "Library/Thunderbird"

After the new install, when you open the "Profiles" folder, you will probably see two profiles, your old one that should have tons of stuff in it, and a new one that ends with a "-1". The TB installer knew you had an old profile, but ignored it, and created this new one. There is a "Profile.ini" file (profile init) in this folder, it probably has the breadcrumbs for TB to determine what profile to use, but no matter how I fussed with it I could never get my old profile to work. So here is what I did - INSURE THUNDERBIRD IS SHUT DOWN!

- renamed my old profile "5guk46hv.default-release" to "xxx"

- deleted the newly created other profile

- deleted the Profile.ini file

- delete TB in the Applications folder

- re-run the TB Installer

- the Finder window for "Library/Thunderbird" should now have a Profile.ini file

- in "Profiles", you should now see a new profile (that ends in default-release) and your old "xxx" folder

- copy the new profile name, change that directory to "yyy", and rename your "xxx" folder with the copied name

• delete yyy

- launch Thunderbird

- voila! Now you have your old email!

See my technique below to recover your email.

I did as the Mozilla post suggested. While I was able to downloaded and reinstall Thunderbird on my Mac, I still cannot access the years and years of important and sometimes treasured emails from family who are no longer with us that were there yesterday. It only gave me the option of creating a new account (not restore an old one). I am trying not to panic but I don't know what else to do.

Any help on how to transfer that data would be greatly appreciated.

Surely you have backups of your "years and years of important and sometimes treasured emails".

If so, you can retrieve those emails from your backup.

Access the old emails through the email provider's webmail page then save them before messing with the account settings.

Followed the 4th post down by Seattlewb, got to the part where you select General and there was no General but there was a box that said something about Thunderbird (I forget what it said but it applied to our situation as a specific box that showed up after a minute or so), clicking that brought up a separate popup that said Tbird was damaged and suggested remove and replace but there was one choice that was load anyway (or something like that) and clicking that brought up Tbird with all my files. This is probably the latest iteration and I was using Ventura 13.0.1 installed yesterday

I just went through the same process and want to elaborate on the posting from Iberes. Click on System Settings, then on Privacy & Security. Scroll down almost to the bottom and you are asked if you want to open Thunderbird anyway. Click Yes. Then you get the box that advises you to move Thunderbird to the trash. Your other options are Cancel and Open. Click Open and your Thunderbird should be restored.

David, I used your technique --without success to recover my emails --UNTIL i realized that the profile.ini was critical. One must first make sure which profile is actually filled with your emails.

Can't stress this enough. TB created several new ones over the course of a transfer from an older computer to new OS upgrades. I was under the mistaken impression that one of the more recently-created profiles was the desired one, and re-wrote the profile.ini file several times over trying to bring up my accounts & emails. (Make notes of every you change in a text file!!! you will not remember if you get interrupted in this exercise.)

Of course they were empty.

The critical part of the profiles.ini file (after naming Profile1 and Profile0, etc.) appears to be this section ref-ing the install.ini,

Example:

[Install752D...ACBCEC]

Default=Profiles/amon......b9.default where amon......b9.default is the actual, original profile with all your info.

Locked=1

Discovered this after much trial and error, since I really don't know this code. BUT, making sure the Install section of Profiles.ini had the correct profile name, I got my emails back-- just not the Address Book which I will have to recreate from scratch. Since I have all my stored emails again, it is not such a keen loss.

Thanks David H. -- you saved my sanity.

The Cat

Try downloading and installing again. See the 4th post in the following from the Thunderbird forum: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1394799

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Thanks for this information - it worked easily!

Thank you very much. It worked.

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