The other thing you should consider is how your girlfriend is "getting" her email. If it is POP3s, then she should have some kind of local storage of mailboxs, either mbox or maildir or similar. If she is reading mail via IMAP, then her mailboxes stay on the server and all her local computer is going to have is the configuration for connecting to the IMAP server and perhaps some local ephemeral cache.
I took a peek in my .thunderbird directory and found this: ~/.thunderbird/<profilename>/ImapMail/<servername>/ and found mbox files and the .msf (mail summary file) index files. Hope that helps! -- Russell Senior [email protected] On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 10:47 AM Mr Apps <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hello everyone, > > I'm searching for an open-source, actively maintained tool or utility to > back up all Thunderbird email on a Linux Mint laptop. While I know it’s > possible to export the profile or simply archive the ~/.thunderbird > folder using a command like tar -cvzf thunderbird-backup.tar.gz > ~/.thunderbird/, I’d prefer a more robust solution. > > This backup is for my girlfriend’s laptop, and she tends to keep a large > amount of old email. I’m hoping to avoid relying solely on profile > exports or basic folder archiving for this task. > > Paranoia runs deep......... > > Thanks, >
