Thunderbird Community Forum

I just upgraded my desktop pc from Windows 10 to 11, and before the upgrade I used the Tools Export function to export my complete Thunderbird profile, so I could import it after the upgrade. Unfortunately the export file cannot be read on my upgraded pc using the Import function - Thunderbird gives me error messages every time, that suggest the exported folder might be corrupted or invalid.

My IMAP emails are fine, as I have set those accounts up from scratch and the folders have now populated with all the emails - the problem is all my filed emails, dating back many years, which were all stored manually in a filing system under Local Folders.

I tried manually copying across the individual files from the extracted back-up folder into my live Thunderbird profile and then reopened Thunderbird...which worked to some extent...as in, all the folders are there, but no emails are showing! It shows no messages under each folder, even though if you look under the Profile you can see that the email files exist.

I tried various ways to bring them in, including zipping one of the folders and trying to import from the zip file (which also brought in a folder but no emails) but even though the email files are clearly there under my profile, Thunderbird shows 0 messages in all my Local Folders. It's as though it is unaware the files exist, so I suspect it needs them to be formally imported somehow?

I would hate to lose the emails, as they document important information and purchases etc over many years, along with archived emails for my charity work, social events, etc. As I said, I can see the files are there but simply copying the files to my profile has only worked to the extent the filing 'structure' is visible, Thunderbird doesn't display any of the emails.

I have included two images...one of my Thunderbird Local Folders as they currently look, and the other showing the backed up files existing in my Profile, which I hope are helpful.

Can anyone help please? I am running a desktop PC on Windows 11. Thanks, David.

When I start Thunderbird 128.5.2esr (32-bit) on my Windows 10 Home PC Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045, it has become increasingly slower recently. I have been using it for many years now and up until this year it would typically start in ~30 seconds.

I am accessing three separate POP email accounts and each of them has a number of subfolders with important stored messages. I thought that perhaps I had just too many folders and messages, so I removed hundreds of the stored messages and some of the sub folders. I routinely compact all accounts.

Today, it took over 8 minutes for Thunderbird to open. Incidentally, once it opens initially it seems to perform normally thereafter.

Is there something that I can do to speed things up?

Thanks in advance, Rich Green

Just what the subject line says. Go looking for something and Search doesn't find it. Even after I remember the email and find it, Search does not find it.

Why is this? It is un-usable, actually as it happens all the time.

For instance, putting in a company name like "walmart.com" will find some but not all the emails with walmart.com and certainly not the most recent ones specifically with a person's name.

I can start Thunderbird but it always crashes very shortly after startup (within about 30 seconds). Here is a crash report:

bp-e6e2f348-5338-458f-a03e-c03b70241224

I have started TB in safe mode, started Windows in safe mode, reinstalled, tried clearing startup cache. Nothing is working. Thanks for your help,

When trying to send emails from Thunderbird, I either get an error message that they have timed out, or that the server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. This problem started out of the blue on Friday 20th Dec. I can send emails by logging into my email provider 123-Reg without any problem. Any help appreciated.

Hello! I recently got the update to Thunderbird 128 on my PopOS laptop via sudo apt update/upgrade. I don't know what the previous version was. Since the update, Thunderbird will spike my CPU to 120 - 140% (per command-line "top") if I have an interaction with it (e.g. reading and then deleting an email that was received) after the program has been sitting idle for several minutes. After a few minutes of loud fans, things calm down again so I presume Thunderbird is doing some sort of maintenance routine that completes successfully.

I do not have the global search index thing turned on. I did not change the default mailbox db idle time. I do have rather large mailboxes that are synced via SMTP, from three different providers. There are dozens of folders (not hundreds) containing thousands if messages (but not tens of thousands). Hopefully that gives an idea of scale .. I don't have a massive overload of untended email history but I do have a quantity of historical emails that the system has to deal with.

I followed the excellent directions online to obtain a profile during one of these high-cpu sessions. It is available at https://share.firefox.dev/4dAmyAz

Please let me know if there is anything further I can do to help diagnose this issue, such as generating more specific profiles. The high-cpu state is a pretty common occurrance now.

The Inbox show have 1 message,but the dialog cant display message. when i use [search message] in inbox ,the message can display. Thanks,Have a good Day! Richard Lee

I reset my PC and saved the wrong profile path, so i cant restore my thunderbird profile the normal way. However, I exported the profile to my phone and the thunderbird android app, where it is still stored. Can I export my profile from the App to then import it on the PC version? thx for your help!

I have several errors associated with the unified folders display. I have 6 email addresses coming in to Thunderbird. 3 are IMAP and 3 are POP. I have the POP addresses consolidated into the "Local" Folders Inbox, Sent, Trash etc. In the "All Folder" account views, the Local folder correctly displays one Inbox, one Sent, one Trash etc. The 3 POP emails accounts are being consolidated appropriately. However,in Unified folders, the Local folder as well as all of the individual POP addresses are now listed for the Inbox, Trash and Junk folders. There is now no consolidation.

Also, the Unified folders themselves are extremely slow in working. Accessing the properties for the Unified Inbox, Trash or Junk folders results in a long wait with Thunderbird entering a not responding state. Right click operations on the unified folders do not work at all. I cannot select properties, I cannot mark as read, empty or otherwise manipulate the folder. I must go to the individual accounts to manage any folder content. Which I would think makes the whole concept of Unified folders moot.

I am not at all certain what may be the root cause of this rather longstanding problem. I have deleted the smartfolders directory, have deleted the virtualfolders.dat and foldercache.json and foldertree.json files. Nothing seems to work.

Any suggestions?

I run Thunderbird, Thunderbird ESR, K-9 or Thunderbird. Windows 7, 10 and 11, Linux and Android 5.1 and 12.

My desktops all have a gmail and yahoo.co.uk email addresses. Each account is linked to there respective contacts server but all my contacts are in one gmail account which has lost most of the contacts in recent months, that is, only the contacts that I have used recently are still present. So I have been investigating the settings and adjusting in some cases.

Some instances all the account are still linked to the contacts servers. Other cases only some of the accounts are still linked and I want to re-establish the other accounts that have become local accounts, these still have my full complete address book.

Lastly between K9, thunderbird, contacts google I don't know what went wrong but I like advice on how to avoid the problem in future. In the meantime seasons greatings, no hurry my christmas messages will have to wait.

I setup my account it worked well, I changed my office365 password. I was prompted to login with Oauth2, and it worked. However, I can receive emails, but cannot send emails. I get a notice that my password is wrong when I come to send emails. It just happens because of the password change. No matter what I do I cannot find where the Oauth was saved for smtp. There seems to be a desync, where the password updated for the Incoming server, but never lets me or updates the Oauth for the smtp server. Any thoughts?

Deleting saved passwords, just gets me to do Oauth2 for the incoming, it never takes effect on the smtp server.

Using thunderbird to connect to the mail server outlook.office365.com with imap gives the message "user is authenticated but not connected" . I have 2 accounts on this server and one works fine and the other gives this message. This occurs on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. Latest version of Thunderbird is being used. Any help would be appreciated.

Many times when I am forwarding emails or copying and pasting text from an outside source, the spell check will choose a word like "isn't" and highlight "isn" as a misspelled word. This has happened with a number of different contractions.

Additionally, it will pick parts of an abbreviated name in someone's email address in the To: field as a mistake. I do not have the time or desire to constantly, go through a long email and choose 'add to dictionary' or click ignore. Why is it even looking at parts of a contraction, and it should be ignoring the To field altogether.

Is there something wrong with my version or is this how it operates? My TBird is up-to-date: 128.5.2esr (64-bit).

I just migrated my Thunderbird from my old MacBook to my new Mac Mini. I tried following the official instructions and the instructions in the linked thread, but I experienced the same problem the other users did— that Thunderbird, on the new Mac, would act as if it was setting up a new account, even after replacing the entire Thunderbird folder in the user's Library folder. With some investigation, I was able to detect how to fix the migration, though I can't tell you why Thunderbird behaves this way.

Here are the instructions I followed: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/que.../1397228]

The process of copying the old Thunderbird is correctly described. However, there is still some funny business on the receiving end.

What I determined was that Thunderbird, for whatever reason, wasn't reading the information in the profiles.ini and installs.ini in a way that launched the migrated installation. Instead, it still created a new installation and a new profile and overlaid those on top of the information in the migrated files, making the newly created profile the default and ignoring the migrated profile when launching.

In order to correct this, I needed to manually edit the profiles.ini and installs.ini file (in a simple text editor) to use the NEW installation but substituting in my MIGRATED profile for the newly created one.

I'm sorry I didn't take screen shots before deleting the files, but the important thing is to edit both files so the both are using the NEWLY CREATED installation ID but that both files only reference the OLD profile ID (deleting all other mentions of the newly created profile and deleting mentions of the old installation ID. This is just a copy/paste operation.

I've attached screenshots of mockups of what my new profiles.ini and installs.ini look like. The important thing is that both have the NEWLY CREATED installation ID (not the one copied from the old Mac) with the OLD profile ID.

Hey,

I am running a new Mac and when I am composing an email and click attachments, the Mac finder (file system) window pops up, but all options are greyed out for 5-10 seconds before I can navigate. This is not the case in the native one if I open it normally outside of Thunderbird.

I have reinstalled and tried all the normal steps, and the issue is still persisting.

I would appreciate any help or having this escalated to the team.

Thanks!

Probably after the last update I am not able to simply do "Folder Maintenace" by File > Do Folder Mainenace. After doing this the process gives an error message:

"You cannot maintain the "Recycle Bin in xxx@xxx.net" folder because you cannot write to the folder. Check that you have enough disk space and write permissions to the folder and repeat the action.

This started to happen simultaneously on all my devices (two PCs, one notebook), all with updated Windows 11 and with last version of Thunderbird (128.5.2esr (64 bit) and also both in my personal and working mail domains. All of them are IMAP.

If I try to maintain only the trash bin separately, it takes a long time and finishes without any error message. But trying after that the complete maintain again fails.

I tried to delete trash files from the account profile on the disc and then it work. But only until I deleted any message. Then the problem ocurred again.

I am not sure whether I am doing good or bad to maintain folders regularly, but it was okay and without problems yet around month ago, not now.

Thank you, Michal

Thunderbird on my wife's windows 10 pc opens but hangs trying to communicate with ATT/Yahoo server. When none of the obvious troubleshooting steps helped, I thought the Profile might be corrupted. I recovered only the 2 day-old Profile folder from my Retrospect backup set, renamed the current Profile folder, and pasted the older Profile in its place. Thunderbird then started, logged into the server, and downloaded emails. However, nothing about Firefox looked familiar - no the local options/folders, etc. were there. How do I get the original Thunderbird look and feel back for her (very important)?

My calendar won't save a new entry (and has no entries). How do I remove and reinstall (refresh) the calendar? Thanks for any help. My Thunderbird is 128.4.4esr (64-bit). My OS is Ubuntu 24.04.1