TB is free, but your mail provider, which is totally independent of TB, may charge a fee to host your mail account, e.g. fastmail.com. Who is your account with?

I'm glad to get the free confirmed. I really began to think something was fishy when I told the lady I needed to think about renewing [the price she quoted was pretty high] and I asked where I could go online to renew if I decided to, and she told me I had to just call them back and they would do it. No online renewal??? Then when I googled and saw the number listed at a scam site I was convinced.

Anyway, your question - the first account in TB is at my ISP, that I get for using them, and the other is for a small business with a website hosted by a friend of mine's hosting business and he never charges me anything.

While I've got you, can I lay out my problem?

Both accounts have been running fine for years. Then just after one of the TB updates, incoming mail for the business account stopped working. I could send but not fetch emails. I have no idea if the update broke something, I just wondered.

I called my hosting friend and he wasn't able to help very much. He isn't very familiar with TB, and there wasn't any change at his end that could account for my losing incoming email. His hosting company runs a Microsoft Exchange server [which, again, TB could fetch from for years] so he suggested using Outlook. I have MS Office so I set up an account through Outlook, which did the setup without any effort on my part, I didnt have to configure ports or choose authentication options. So I can do my business emails again, but I dont like Outlook, TB is so much cleaner and easier. And now I have to use 2 different programs to do my emails. It works, but it's a bummer. I could set up my personal email in Outlook and have 1 program but I dont like Outlook, it's a monster.

I've verified that the password is not the problem. My hosting friend had me use his online webmail and I logged in with username and password and got in fine and saw my incoming mail.

So I'm stumped.

Any idea of what to look for in TB that might have gotten it lost?

Post this problem as a separate topic. TB, unlike Outlook and some other clients, doesn't support Exchange accounts by itself, unless the Exchange admin. enables IMAP and SMTP. TB does accept Exchange, but only with the Owl or ExQuilla add-on (license required). There are also issues with the ever-changing authentication requirements for Office365 accounts.

Hi, been away for a while.

I looked at OWL and ExQuilla. So Owl is for OWA, and the hosting company's Exchange seems to be OWA. The webmail I can log in to is for Outlook Web App. I see that OWL is a paid add-on but that would be ok.

But my first question is - they require my permission for "Full, unrestricted access to Thunderbird, and your computer."

That sounds a bit uncomfortable. What access do they require, and how does it work?

They must be nice if TB offers them as an add-on, but still I squirm.

The 'access' wording is the same for all add-ons, and is explained in detail here.

OK, on reading that stuff, I think I was conclusion-jumping. I was thinking I was giving the Owl folks access to my computer. But it just means the add-on needs to be able to do stuff inside my computer in order to work. So I added it.

I then tried to set up an account to connect to the Exchange server, and still didn't get through. I filled in as much of the settings as I could from what I know, but don't know if there is some parameter I don't know about. I looked at the account in Outlook, hoping it would specify something but Outlook doesn't show much like that [that I could see].

So I need to contact my host friend again and ask if there's something I can try

Thx

Just a guess, but it is possible your "friend" has not updated the version of TLS in use on the server and you are choosing to use SSL/TLS encryption. Perhaps you could confirm with them that they have V1.2 or later of TLS available on their mail server.

Matt

Here are a couple of images from the settings, Connection Security and Authentication Method. Those are a couple of the things I don't know much about except that TB has them to choose from. I will ask my hosting friend [Jim] about it but I dont even know if they use one or the other. As I said, the working account in Outlook doesn't show anything I can find in its version of Settings. I figure if Outlook works it would help me set up TB to use the same but I will just have to ask Jim and see if we can find the trick.

It still puzzles me that TB worked there for 7 years and then just stopped. I am guessing it's related to what sfhowes said above - "There are also issues with the ever-changing authentication requirements for Office365 accounts." Presumably Outlook would know how to change with server changes, but it's not gonna tell me about it. I hate Outlook.

But thanks, and thanks to sfhowes. I noticed the thumbs up icon for Helpful and clicked it, wish I could go back and click for earlier helpfuls

Try connection security none... it is the default option for outlook I think, so it might just do it.

Alas no, I'll have to go to Jim and ask him to review the configuration stuff

But thanks both of you, you've given me some ideas to bring up to him

Best wishes

SonOfEru

For anyone who comes across this question... Just to confirm: there is no official telephone support for Thunderbird. Free support is via this official website. Thunderbird email client is free to download and use from official website: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/

However, anyone has the right to ask an IT person in their area who understands Thunderbird to assist them. This of course would be chargeable in the same way you would pay a mechanic to fix a car.

Most addon extensions are Free but the author would appreciate a donation to help with maintenance. There are some addon extensions that are paid for addons eg: OWL and ExQuilla

Agreed to all of that. The number I was given by my ISP tech support was scamola for sure. I did call back to the ISP and tell them, but to my surprise they just said "Well, that's the number we have on file here." I wanted to warn them away from it.

And I appreciate all the help here, and just made a donation to Thunderbird. After all, I've been using it since back when I still had hair.