Thunderbird Community Forum

I have just installed Thunderbird on Windows 11 and it has two very annoying new habits. When I click on an email it opens it instead of giving me a preview. And when I move an email to another folder it also opens that folder. Neither happened on the old computer so how can I get back to the way it used to be?

My Thunderbird calendar refuses to display dates in European format, namely day-month-year. I have read lots of helpful hints on the forums and tried everything, but nothing changes. My system is Ubuntu 25.04 with Cinnamon 6.4.8. Thunderbird version is 140.3.0esr (64-bit). Some of the suggestions refer to settings that are no longer there compared to earlier versions. For example, Settings > General > Language and Fonts has no format options. I have also used the config editor while TB was not running and added ntl.date_time.pattern_override.date_short and ntl.date_time.pattern_override.time_short, without any effect. Dates in the calendar still always appear in the illogical American month-day-year format. This is confusing, to say the least ! Has a solution been found to EASILY select the locale and formats that should be used? At the moment, the settings are under different menus and in different locations, and TB seems to be making it as difficult as possible to get these set - permanently ! - to the user's preference.

Hi,

I just cannot find any information on how Thunderbird designers see the Threads / Threading features to be used. How would I use it ? What are my (individual) choices for configuration ? etc.

The only info I can find is : [how to manage and turn on/off the feature].

...and of course lots unhappy user voices across the forums.

So: How would I use it ? What are my (individual) choices for configuration ? etc. Please link the respective Mozilla resource (blog, help, user design doc, ... whatever).

Ah, to start with, a description of how the feature is meant to behave, can be a start. (Sorry, I was just too stupid to find that)

When sending an email using the keyboard shortcut, the settings tell me that I can set TB to give me a confirmation prompt. Why can't I get a confirmation prompt when using the Send button? Is there any way to make TB do that?

I set TB to run a spell check before sending, and that gives me an opportunity to cancel the Send operation. But it only works if the email contains a misspelling.

Thank you.

For some reason (accidental key stroke?) one of my email account's folders are no longer arranged alphanumerically. How can I reset the order to alphanumerical? I can't find a menu item or setting to do this. Thanks

Hello, my email service has shut down for the second time. When asked to open, a small window appears and says the system is affected by a whatever. The window only lasts for a couple of seconds.

I tried to follow the instructions as how to get my profile, but is was lost due to an internet access cut.

Hoping someone can help. regards Stephen

Hello,

I've used Thunderbird on Linux for a while and love it! I use it for multiple email accounts from different providers.

Until recently I manually Archived email in to Local Folders on my PC. I do this to remove email from my mail providers and to avoid storage limits.

I recently learned that if I I set the "Message Archives" option to a specific folder for each account under "Local Folders" I can either manually archive there or I can use an Extension like "AutoarchiveReloaded" to do this semi-automatically. Great!

Unfortunately for my main mailbox only, despite being configured to write to a sub-folder under Local Folders, Thunderbird seems to ignore the settings. It always tries to create an Archive folder in the mailbox itself. Every attempt creates a mess which takes time to cleanup.

The mailbox in question:

• Uses IMAP
• Has "Keep message archives in:" set to "Other:" "Local Folders > Archives > (the name of the account)".

I am concerned that if I try "Keep message archives in:" "Archives" Folder on Local Folders it will combine with all my other archived accounts which are sorted in to sub-folders correctly.

Is anyone able to help please?

Thank you!

I am buying a new PC. I would like a 'blank' TB on this machine so I can replan the folders and the email address books. I'd like the current copy on my current PC to be moved to the new PC such that I can access it as I do now but- like a 'sleeping' copy - ie just there to access the emails and address book occasionally/when needed, but not receive new emails.

This will give me a fresh start on the new TB on a new PC, and will save me having to clean up the old TB version. Is this possible? Thankyou

I use Thunderbird on Windows and on Mac. I'm wondering why the startup time on Mac is significantly longer on MacOS. I'm currently on Tahoe 26.0.1 but Thunderbird has always been a slow starter. Can I change any setting to remedy this. At the moment I have two mail accounts configured both Gmail.

We've successfully set up a Hotmail account as an IMAP account; all the emails/folders seem to appear properly, though deletions made on Outlook.com don't seem to show up.

But for now, we have this problem: none of the contacts from the Hotmail account appear in the Thunderbird address book.

How can we (1) get those contacts and (2) keep them up to date, preferably automatically.

Thank you.

Greetings! I read everywhere that we must install the Lightning add-on to use the calendar feature in Thunderbird. But when I search for this add-on, I get a bazillion options, none of which appears Lightning. There is something called Lightning Calendar Tabs that keeps coming up. Is this it? Doesn't seem so.

Where can one download/install the Lightning add-on?

Thank you.

I am a M365 - leaver, and working several months now with Thunderbird/LibreOffice/Nextcloud. Sometimes I'm proud of what I learned and can do with the new software. Sometimes I'm a little lost in the woods.

I'm using the add-on Quicktext to insert default html text, like a template, in some of my my emails. One of the templates is a notification for my customers to inform them the invoice they received from me is not yet paid.

In the former software I was used to click in my template on a datepicker to insert the senddate of the invoice. I tried to insert a html-datepicker. This appears in the email, but is send to the reciever as a datepciker, not as the date I choose.

My question. Is there a way to insert a datepicker in a template like Quicktext, or is there a better add-on for this goal?

An old forum describes how to sync calendars in Thunderbird. Here is an easy solution - In the left-hand pane of your calendar page, right-click your calendar name/ export calendar - into a removable device. In your other computer - Tools/import/ import from a file/ choose to import calendar - easy!

I have used Thunderbird for years. I am on the esr update channel, 140.3.1 esr, and it says it is up to date. I just learned that there is another update channel, called "release". My Norton Internet Security program tells me that Thunderbird is out of date, and that the latest version is 143.0.1. Maybe it is confused because of the two update channels? Why are two different configurations maintained? Is there a reason that I should switch to the other one? Thanks in advance for any clarification.

Hi!

I can't get messages from my Thunderbird account. When I click "Get messages" nothing happens and it usually says "Done" on the bottom left corner. I have to use my domain's webmail account to get my e-mail and it only allows me to read it and delete junk.

I really would love to have my Thunderbird account working again as soon as possible.

Thanks so much, Nancy Pedersen

My Thunderbird was not finding messages that I could see were there.

I followed the advice here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database.

I deleted the (large) global-messages-db.sqlite (I have been using Thunderbird for a long time - and I am monthly contributor).

The rebuild gets to a certain point and then stops (as indicated by Tools Activity Manager). Always at the same point. I guess there is a bad message in there somewhere. But now I am worse off than before.

I tried rebuilding several times. I have also compacted the account folders of the account that stopped and then tried rebuilding.

I have many years of messages in there and I need a functioning search. What can I do?

Hello...I'm currently having a problem with Yahoo Mail having too many messages in the account, and as a result, I cannot receive new mail in my Yahoo account. It was suggested to use Thunderbird to download everything from my Yahoo Mail account. I've downloaded Thunderbird, set up the server parameters as instructed, and it appears to have downloaded (synchronized) everything just as it appears in my Yahoo Mail account, via iMap. I would like to currently (temporarily) stop Thunderbird from downloading and synchronizing with my Yahoo Mail account so that I can sort through and delete/save/organize what's been downloaded into Thunderbird, and delete everything in my Yahoo Mail account so that I can resume receiving new mail messages in my Yahoo Mail account. I like the Thunderbird app so far and am considering using it as a one stop app for all of my online email accounts...Yahoo, Gmail, etc. I apologize for taking up time and space for this question, as I'm presuming it's something pretty simple to do, but for some reason, I'm just not seeing how to do this in Thunderbird Settings. Can someone please guide me on how to do this? I used iMap to download/synchronize my Yahoo Mail with Thunderbird. Thanks in advance!!

anyone know how to recover my email contacts in latest version ot TB, theyve dissapeared since using spam aniallater , with is now uninstalled.

i have the same email acct on my other pc , could i recover everything from therte as its intact thanks

also my TB spam filters have now dissapeared [but still seem to be working] but filtering the wrong things. thanks if anyone can help