Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

"From" value changed in list pane and preview pane after pulling from Gmail

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • Last reply by Matt

more options

I'm boggled by this one. I use Thunderbird 128.2.0esr (64-bit) on Fedora and Gnome. I use it as my mail interface and my POP server is Gmail.

Earlier this week, when I pulled up the list of emails in my inbox, I noticed that emails from GitHub were all "From" one apparently random person. If I click on the email and look at the mail in the preview pane, it too has the incorrect "From" value.

However, if I reply to or forward the email, it will have the correct "From" address.

What's stranger, is I also get emails from Jira and other bots. They two have the same issue but with another person. For instance, all of my emails from GitHub now come from "John Smith". All my Jira emails come from "Elizabeth Doe (Jira)". The people they are coming from are people I receive those types of emails from, but not every single email. I've rebooted, and still the same problem, and still the same wrong people in the From field for GitHub, Jira, and others.

Any ideas?

I'm boggled by this one. I use Thunderbird 128.2.0esr (64-bit) on Fedora and Gnome. I use it as my mail interface and my POP server is Gmail. Earlier this week, when I pulled up the list of emails in my inbox, I noticed that emails from GitHub were all "From" one apparently random person. If I click on the email and look at the mail in the preview pane, it too has the incorrect "From" value. However, if I reply to or forward the email, it will have the correct "From" address. What's stranger, is I also get emails from Jira and other bots. They two have the same issue but with another person. For instance, all of my emails from GitHub now come from "John Smith". All my Jira emails come from "Elizabeth Doe (Jira)". The people they are coming from are people I receive those types of emails from, but not every single email. I've rebooted, and still the same problem, and still the same wrong people in the From field for GitHub, Jira, and others. Any ideas?

All Replies (4)

more options

And FWIW, I pulled up the Gmail web interface and verified that the write FROM values were displayed on it for these emails.

more options

yeah, perhaps you need to remove the incorrect entry from your address book. Thunderbird "defaults" to using the address book to enter information in those lists.

See settings

more options

I experienced the same problem yesterday when, as part of an OS upgrade from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to 24.04 LTS yesterday, I got upgraded to Thunderbird 128.3.1esr (64-bit) (my first snap-based Thunderbird). Following the upgrade, in one particular folder every message now displays the same, incorrect value for "Correspondents" and that same value for the "From" in each individual message within that folder.

The folder in question holds messages generated by posts to the "Issues" and "Pull Requests" queues in a GitHub.com repository, specifically, (List-Id) "Perl/perl5 <perl5.Perl.github.com>". (You can see the original post on GH GH .) In the Thunderbird tree listing of messages I see the "Correspondents" for this message displayed as "H.Merijn Brand" -- as is the case for all other messages in this folder. In the message pane I see the "From" displayed as "H.Merijn Brand" as well. (See image attached.) However, if I hover the mouse pointer over the "From" value, the pop-up indicates the real value of "From": "James E Keenan <notifications@github.com". </p>

(H.Merijn Brand is a real person and major Perl contributor. If I had selected any other message in this folder, his name would have been displayed, but hovering over the "From" value I would have gotten a different poster, say, "Todd Rinaldo <notifications@github.com".) </p>

If I double click to display the message in a new tab, the "From" value is also displayed as "H.Merijn Brand", even though hovering over the "From" value indicates that the message really came from "James E Keenan <notifications@github.com". </p>

When I go to my email service provider's (pobox.com) web interface, I see the "From" value displayed correctly for all messages, i.e., the messages are not all visibly attributed to "H.Merijn Brand". So this problem is specific to the way Thunderbird is rendering the messages. Moreover, it is specific to this version of Thunderbird, as earlier in the day, before my OS upgrade, I was using whatever was the last version of Thunderbird I had installed against Ubuntu 22.04. This is the only folder in my Thunderbird installation where I am subscribed to GitHub messages. Can anyone provide guidance?

more options

@jkeenan1

If the above information does not resolve your issue, you should consider creating a new thread with specific details about your issue. I have nothing to add here and will lock the topic to prevent further spam on the topic.

Thank you.