My provider has been bought out, and the IMAP server has changed on one of my accounts.

is this a mail provider, or a hosting company? from cointext I get the feeling this is a hosted domain, rather than just a change of a local ISP mail server name. But please set me straight.

I've edited the account settings 'server name' (but it's not a name, it's an address isn't it?).

Yes and no. The literals you and I use are the name, although a universal rescource locator (URL) is the term generally used to a link on a server. The acxtual address is an Internet Protocol address that is obtained from the domain name services that allows Thunderbird or your browser to connect to a specified location. Google.com is the name of the server. 173.194.219.101 is the IP address that comes from Domain name services to actually act as an address. Under the hood an program connectedto the internet will be communicating with 173.194.219.101 not google.com. That is just a layer to make it understandable for us humans.

But the program still tries to connect to the old server, complains that the server is not available, and does not download anything.

Now we get to the issue. Really there is insufficient information to determine a real answer. If my suspicions about hosting are correct then it is quite probably that there are domain name services issues. Things like changes needing time to propagate to the DNS server you use and perhaps changes needed to DNS in the MX record of the domain etc. But you will need to fill in the blanks.

I can't for the life of me find how to change or delete the old imap config.

While there is a hidden entry for the server name I have only ever heard of it being an issue with office365 servers using oauth2.0 and MFA authentication. As your posting lacks details I have no idea if that is you. In normal circumstances changing the name of the server should see subsequent connection attempts directed to the new name.

The identity has the smtp settings - but not the IMAP server settings (or at least I can't find it).

You are conflating account settings for incoming mail and outgoing mail which is managed on a per identity basis and therefore has an SMTP service attached.

Thunderbird is, I think, perhaps unique in its separation of "Mail account" as the email address you get mail from and the "identity" which sends mail. For the vast majority of us each account has but a single identity. But for those folks that have used mail aggregation tools like those offered from google and yahoo and others to pick up email from other addresses have more than one "identity" per incoming mail account. These people have mail addressed to Bill@ PunkRocker@ and Manager@ all in the same account. Some is from a corporate mail system, some might be from an ISP email address and lord only know where else. This is where the identity actually comes into play to seperate out these mails and actually send replies with appropriate names and from appropriate servers. So when Bill who likes is guns replies to his mail he gets the appropriate signature and the email comes from his Google address, but when he makes his reply an manager of the corporation is gets entirely different signatures and the mail comes form a server for mail from manager@bigcorporation.com

Needless, this is all part of setting up an account. (who it is from and where it comes from as well as who is replying) it is also shown in the first page of account settings, even before you get to the server settings that will retrieve mail because who we are is more important that where we go to get our mail. In this instance I would say identities is irrelevant to the issue and therefore your frustration is based as much on trying to make it relevant to the location issue.

Please expand, your provider? is that hosting provider or Internet service provider? What exactly have you been told to change? What is the domain of the email? and has this changed?

Really I am trying to understand exactly where you are, not frustrate you further.

Thanks for your response.

The old provider was "zuver". The new provider is called ventraIP, they took over the other company. Their mail setup has changed somewhat, I haven't noticed this for a couple of weeks (it's a low traffic account) so now I've tried to change the mail settings in thunderbird so I get mail again.

It's a cpanel account, and I'm still using the same domain (mine).

But the error message is: "failed to connect to imap.flockmail.com" which as far as I can tell is not set anywhere anymore in thunderbird. I've only used flockmail before zuver.

The mail servers both imap & smtp are "mail.[mydomain.com]" . (this is correctly set up in thunderbird, but no mail arrives)

I've been able to set up emailing with this provider in The Bat without problems yesterday as a test. So the details I've got are correct - and have nothing to do with flockmail.

However, I've no idea how/where the flockmail message is coming from in thunderbird. That configuration was discarded 2 providers and at least a year ago.

It's a bit baffling to say the least.

Open your Thunderbird profile folder, Quit Thunderbird (give it a few seconds to end all background processes) and then open the prefs.js file using Notepad. Using the find and replace function, replace all occurrences of the old server name with the new name, save the file then start Thunderbird.

Thanks, There are/were 16 occurrences of imap.flockmail.com. I'd not have expected such amount of residual garbage!

After the replacement, the error message remains, but now it complains about the changed domain name ("failed to connect to server ...")

Edit: repeated post deleted.

So do we have a backup of the pref.js file so we can determine what you changed? That is the trouble with global find and replace, you have no idea what it is you have changed or even if it was relevant.

One of the things you probably changed is the storage location on disk of the account mail, which would have remained stable across many or any changes to the server named.

I suggest you create a new profile you can do that from about:profiles in the troubleshooting information on the help menu. Add your account again and see if that gets mail. If it does we can look at recovering address books and old mail if necessary.

I've replaced the pref.js file with the original after the failed attempt.

If I have to redo profiles I have to redo both accounts I'm using here, I guess. The other is a microsoft365 one with owl, and working well.

That'll be a bit of a hassle, won't it? Not sure how to backup/reload configurations & settings - hell, not even sure what will be missing.

And of course time, time, time... :( I think I'll just try to delete and recreate the problematic account here, if it does not work, then I'll probably have to say good-bye to Thunderbird, I'm not cut out for this kind of regular maintentance.

Thanks gents.