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Opened an account to track my colleges business mails: have e-mail address and password but cant connect to server.

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HI I've opened an account to track my brothers e-mails while he is away. I down loaded Thunderbird and entered his e-mail address and other configuration details into the setup wizard and found I could send e-mails to him but couldn't see his mail. Is this the correct way to monitor his mail, if so why cant I see them or should I have taken a different route? Unfortunately I fiddled and made all sorts of changes to the setup and lost my way so tried uninstalling and reinstalling to get back to the wizard again but re-installation bypassed the wizard and used the info I entered the first time round so I guess there are configuration files that weren't removed during uninstall, which hasn't helped!

Andy

HI I've opened an account to track my brothers e-mails while he is away. I down loaded Thunderbird and entered his e-mail address and other configuration details into the setup wizard and found I could send e-mails to him but couldn't see his mail. Is this the correct way to monitor his mail, if so why cant I see them or should I have taken a different route? Unfortunately I fiddled and made all sorts of changes to the setup and lost my way so tried uninstalling and reinstalling to get back to the wizard again but re-installation bypassed the wizard and used the info I entered the first time round so I guess there are configuration files that weren't removed during uninstall, which hasn't helped! Andy

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Thunderbird uses "Profiles" to hold all the settings, address books, e-mail, and everything else. The Profiles are stored in Profile folders that do not get removed when a person uninstalls Thunderbird, and is automatically used when Thunderbird gets installed again. This is so people don't lose their e-mail and settings if they accidentally uninstall Thunderbird, or if they want to reinstall the program without losing their e-mail.

What you want to do is create a new Thunderbird Profile and delete the old one so you can start over with the settings.

Quit Thunderbird.

Hold down the Windows key and press R. Type into the Run window:

 thunderbird.exe -p

This will start the Profile Manager. From there you can create a new Profile and delete the old one.

If you want to learn more about Profiles: Profiles - Where Thunderbird stores your messages and other user data

Once you have a new profile and put the e-mail settings in again, then if you encounter a problem, stop. Record the error message you get (text or screenshot), and ask a new question here to get help with that.

In preparation for that: How do I create a screenshot of my problem?