This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
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Title       :   Back Up Thunderbird Message Filters
Author      :   Remy van Elst
Date        :   15-12-2013
URL         :   https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Thunderbird_Back_Up_Mail__Message_Filters.html
Format      :   Markdown/HTML
---



This tutorial shows you how to backup and restore the mail message filters in
Thunderbird on multiple platforms. The filters are in a plain text file located
in your thunderbird Profile folder. On Mac OS X for example this is under the
`/Users/<username>/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/<profile>/ImapMail/<mailserver>/`
folder. (If you use IMAP.)

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The file is named `msgFilterRules.dat` and the contents look a bit like this:



   version="9"
   logging="no"
   name="From is: [email protected]"
   enabled="yes"
   type="17"
   action="Move to folder"
   actionValue="imap://user%[email protected]/Folder"
   condition="AND (from,is,[email protected])"


The above example moves any email coming from the email address `[email protected]`
to the folder `Folder` on the IMAp account.

To back up all the filters, do the following:

 * Close all instances of Thunderbird
 * Copy the file `msgFilterRules.dat` to a backup location.

To restore the file, to the following:

 * Close all instances of Thunderbird
 * Copy the file `msgFilterRules.dat` back into your (possibly new) profile folder

Under any normal Linux distro the path probably is like this:



   /home/<username>/.thunderbird/Profiles/<profile>/ImapMail/<mailserver>/msgFilterRules.dat


For Mac OS X the path is like this:



   /Users/<username>/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/<profile>/ImapMail/<mailserver>/msgFilterRules.dat


For Windows the path probably is like this on pre Vista machines:



   C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<profile>\ImapMail\<mailserver>\msgFilterRules.dat


The latter versions of Windows (vista, 7, 8):



   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<profile>\ImapMail\<mailserver>\msgFilterRules.dat


If you want to convert these Thunderbird rules to `.procmailrc` rules a script
for that can be found [here:
http://sourceforge.net/p/tbprocmailconv/code/HEAD/tree/tbprocmailconv.py][2]

  [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212
  [2]: http://sourceforge.net/p/tbprocmailconv/code/HEAD/tree/tbprocmailconv.py

---

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