How to Create Portable Version of Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is one of the most used open-source email clients all over the world. It is available for all the popular operating systems and is backed by Mozilla developers known for keeping the security always ahead and above everything else. Usually you can use it by installing in your computer, but if you want to use it in the portable mode and keep it in your pen drive then that is also very easy thing to do.

Using a portable mode also helps you use multiple versions of Thunderbird for the same profile or on the same computer. You can download a portable version of Thunderbird from the portable apps website, or can create your own portable version very easily. Here is how:

Note: Before proceeding, you should install the 7-Zip software in Windows. It is free and is required to extract the contents of the Mozilla Thunderbird setup file.

  1. First of all, you have to download the full setup package of Firefox for Windows. Do not download the web setup installer which is only around 1 MB in size. You can find the setup packages at the following links.
  2. After you have downloaded the Thunderbird setup file, copy it over to your USB disk or a folder where you want to create the portable edition of Thunderbird. For example, I am going to creating the portable edition in the D:\Thunderbird folder. Then right-click on the setup installer file and choose 7-Zip → Extract Here as shown in the picture.Mozilla Thunderbird
  3. This would extract the contents of the setup file to a folder named core. Another file setup.exe is also extracted, which you can delete if you want. You can also delete the full setup file that you copied in step 2 above.
  4. Create a new file launch.bat with the following contents :
    .\core\thunderbird.exe -profile "PROFILE" -no-remote
    

    Mozilla Thunderbird

  5. Save this launch.bat file in D:\Thunderbird or wherever you copied the setup file in step 2 above.

This is it, now you can double-click on the launch.bat file and you will be able to use Mozilla Thunderbird in any PC you want without installing it.

3 comments

  1. Sure have been missing your posts!
    Hope all is well!

    Now there are actual paf portables of Tbird on the web. But long before they were available, I downloaded TBird and ran Uniextract on it.
    In fact I have since hundreds of times made portables from installers of programs.
    I portabilize everything I can.
    If it is the rare instance when something won’t extract portable with Uniextract, I don’t use it on my win7 and xp machines.

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