Thunderbird Community Forum

Background I wanted to give Thunderbird a shot because I really, really got tired of Outlook and their shenanigans. About 2 months ago, I tried it a first time and had an issue that prevented me from sending emails from my Hotmail email accounts. I gave up after a week of troubleshooting.

Outlook has come up with more bugs and shenanigans, so I tried again, convinced that there had to be a solution. And I found one. If anyone is interested, I was getting the error "Login to server outlook.office365.com with username <...> failed", and the way I fixed it was by replacing "hotmail.com" with "outlook.com" in the server settings. However, not all is fixed yet.

Current problem I noticed that the messages in my Outlook mail (other than the inbox) are not syncing properly. When I start TB, it appears to sync folders because I have seen new emails in subfolders already. However, if new emails come in while TB is open, it only syncs them if they are in my inbox.

I have looked around already and found that when I right-click that email account and I choose "Subscribe...", it presents me with an empty list and I can't see or enable/disable any folder subscriptions (refresh does nothing). This is strange because of 2 reasons: 1. All my subfolders are there, and they seem to sync when I start up TB. But even if I immediately open the subscribe window, the list is empty. 2. I have a total of 4 email accounts configured, 2 Outlook and 2 Gmail. All except for 1 Outlook account show me the list of folders in the subscribe window, so that made me think it was something in my Outlook account settings. However, nothing I can find there seems to be helpful.

Does anyone have an idea on how to fix this? I'd rather not close and re-open my TB app each time I want to check for new messages. I really want to give TB an honest chance but it's not making it easy for me to like it right now.

I can't retrieve or send emails. says sending of password for user vnoel3@start.ca did not succeed. I hit ok and window comes up enter new password. I try but won't take new password. Are you having issues this morning? Thankyou for your time.

Good morning, I had asked a question early on Saturday, but was unavailable the rest of the weekend so just now responding to associate Corey Bryan's answer. I had gotten a message that I am using an unsupported version and they recommend downloading the latest stable version. He said it appears that I'm on the "Release" channel and most likely want to be on the ESR channel. I also mentioned that I am a cave-man when it comes to anything computer and am very skittish about making any changes as I don't how to straighten out any errors that might occur. He asked me where I installed Thunderbird from and the answer is that I don't know. It was an IT guy that did it many years ago. So I guess my questions are, if I've been using this version for years, do I need to or should I update it? If so, if I click on the latest stable version of Thunderbird, will that change anything on my computer, aside from getting the newer version of T-Bird? And will my e-mails in Thunderbird look any different? Thanks very much for the help. Tony

Hello,

About a decade ago, I zipped my local Thunderbird email folders to archive for future use. Recently I installed Thunderbird again so I could access those emails and attachments. Doubtless I missed a step or instruction.

I copied the folders to the location recommended by one of the pages on this site (as I understood it at any rate). Namely: appdata/roaming/Thunderbird/profiles/8i4zk81v.default-release/Mail/Local Folders.

The folders and emails all show up in the folder and message list panes, but no text or attachments show up in the message pane when a message is selected. Not even the email header appears if I double-click to open an email. I can still read the message text using notepad one of two ways, either: 1) the entire sub-folder (e.g., "Personal") by selecting the file with no extension (i.e., "Personal" rather than "Personal.msf") from the list in Local Folders, or; 2) an individual message in a corresponding folder called "Personal.mozmsgs". Of course, I have no idea which message I read until I open it.

Just in case it helps to know, the IMAP connection with one of my gmail addresses works just fine.

Thanks in advance, Russell

I would like to back up my Address Books using the file extension. It used to be .mab or .sqlite, but in the version I am running (128.5.0esr) I can't figure it out. I assume it is still in the Profile directory someplace ? Thanks

Hi, I use Thunderbird to recieve my emails and I save my emails on my mac but I see that the content of almost all emails from december 2023 to august 2024 has disappeared. The emails are not lost. It is only the content and the header? It is strange.

I use Thunderbird to download my email to my laptop (MacBook Air). I have 4 different email accounts that get downloaded -- 3 use POP. One uses IMAP. It is set up correctly with port 993 and security SSL. When I click on an IMAP message in my inbox, it opens blank, except for the subject line in the frame of the email. Sometimes it will fill out, but sometimes, especially lately, the blank message just sits there, taunting me.

I can read and respond to the message if I log onto the email server in a browser (Firefox, if it matters) but I want my messages on my laptop. I tried to switch to POP to see if that helps since my other 3 email servers work fine, but I can't make that work either. Thoughts? Thank you!

Incidentally, I do not need to save all my messages on my server. I'd be happy to delete them after a couple weeks, but I can't seem to make that happen either.

Problem: newly added account disappears when TB is closed. Thunderbird on this PC (Dell Latitude 6540) has held a Verizon account for years. The "new" account is a different, equally old Verizon account kept on TB in an identical PC I no longer use. When added to TB on the present PC it tests and works fine until TB is closed. Repeated numerous times. Having read thread # 1286437 I did what follows , to no avail: 1. tried TB in troubleshoot mode; 2. tried in Windows safe mode; 3. cleared startup cache; 4. drastically pruned old emails; 5. looked up profile folder under troubleshooting info. Folder qxxxxxxd ( size 1.18 GB before adding new account) holds one folder tree, one directory tree, but NO prefs.js file. Instead, twenty-two prefs-xx.js files from 1 to 22; removed all to a thumb drive except prefs-1.js which I dared not rename as prefs.js; 6. found two profile folders, both labeled default. One is the above holding 1.18 GB, the other holds 685 MB (probably harmless and related to an old university account no longer extant). I copied both profile folders to a thumb drive. Note: profile folder qxxxxxxd is clearly engaged in what I am attempting. When TB is open with the added new account working -- which is the case as I am writing --, profile folder size increases from 1.18 to 1.20 GB and the number of folders increases by one (under "Mail" the list of pop.verizon-xx.net sub-folders increases from 17 to 18). Please advise on what to do next; I am 86 and no software geek, but can follow instructions... Thanks --Paul

I use google to host my email account. I use Imap with TB 128.5.0 esr. MacOS 15.1.1.

Recently, maybe after last OS update, older emails stored in folders (synced with google mail) have zero body text. The same emails are fine on my ipad and phone.

I have check that all folders are subscribed and forced a sync.

Help!

Thank you!

I've updated my MacBook from MacOS 14 to 15.1.1 and it seems to have broken CardBook 97.5. I've checked for updates to the add-ons. I'll get in touch with the developers as well. Has anyone else experienced this?

How does one transfer addressbook entries from an old computer to a new one?

David from TB support wondered how I could get correspondence between help seekers and TB supporters when I followed the instructions I was given. I followed the instructions from November 9 and provided them in my email today. I suppose the problem is that I did/do not know how to place the entries from the old address book into a file that can be transferred from one computer to another. I assumed the file was abook.sqlite, automatically including all of my entries from the address book in the old computer. Apparently, this is not the case.

I need to know how to download into a file my entries from the address book in the old computer. Once that is done, I should be able to transfer that file to my new computer. I also need to know how to install the old entries into the new address book.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Hello, I would like to provide other users with the Thunderbird junk adaptive filter that I have developed to a certain level, but which file in the Thunderbird folder do I give them to do this?

Thanks for reading.

Hi everyone,

I've been using Thunderbird for a few months now and never had any problems until today when I've updated to 128.5.0esr. I'm using iCloud email and suddenly my Sent folder disappeared. When I started TB it showed up and disappeared after 2-3 seconds. It happened few times when I tried to restart TB however now it's permanently gone. I didn't change any settings and the folder is visible in Apple Mail or Spark, however it's gone from TB. Any idea what's going on? Please help.

Thanks, Szymon.

I am running thunderbird version 128.1.0 esr 64 bit. Right now thunderbird opens the email links to google chrome. How do I change thunderbird to open to Microsoft Edge browser?

duplicate of /questions/1475890 thread

I deleted a duplicate profile. I chose to NOT delete the data. Where is the data now? I know the data is supposed to be kept per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager#Deleting_a_profilebold text

Thunderbird v128.4.3ser (32-bit) setup with 4 accounts: Shaw.ca (POP), Shaw.ca (IMAP), 2xGmail (OAuth2). The Shaw.ca (POP) account is the main one, and it stopped receiving email. Another (related?) issue is that Local Folders does not appear. The size of that one Inbox is 4.0GB, which I understand is a limit. I don't want to delete any of that email, but I'm fine with moving/archiving some of it. I moved a whack of it to an Archive folder, but the size of the Inbox and Archive folders don't change (4.0GB + 0.0GB). I have tried repairing and compacting. What can I do? I'm a technician/troubleshooter with many years of experience with Thunderbird ... I recommend it to all 6000 of my clients, because (until now) it is bulletproof.

As of this morning, Thunderbird has started refusing to POP incoming messages from either of two Microsoft accounts, although I can send (SNMP) on them both without a problem. I've read the forum Help articles concerning OAuth, etc., but most of those appear to be more than a couple of months old, and I am already set up under Account Settings as described for those instances. The attached notification image is what pops up when Thunderbird attempts to get new mail on Microsoft accounts. The other image, the bottom of the Thunderbird window, sits there an inordinately long time; sometimes I finally get a Windows notification that the connection has timed out, sometimes not. Anyone know what might be going on? At least I have Webmail on both MS accounts, so not terribly critical.