Thunderbird Community Forum

Email (from gmail) is not downloading. Thunderbird updated yesterday and I can't download today's emails; it gets stuck on "check mail server capabilities." If I go into Gmail it's there, but it's not coming in on Thunderbird

After many years of using TB without any problems on an older computer with Win 10 I suddenly have this confusing little hiccup. If I hit New Message, Reply or Forward a small rectangular box (about 8 x 100mm) appears with a shaded outline in the centre of the screen where the body of the email would go. There is also a black lock with a red line through it at the start of the "Subject" line of the blank email, I don't think I have seen it there before but I maybe wrong.

Clicking inside the box gives nil response except on the far right on the formerly black X that has changed to a white X with a red background when it just deletes the whole page. No amount of right or left clicking outside the box gives any response except for the "error ding sound" and the box jiggles. The box can be dragged to the edge of the screen without any change in responses.

All other email functions work normally, there are no problems with receiving, reading or deleting emails. I do not know how to find out what version of TB that I have installed. So to sum up if I hit New Message, Reply or Forward the only thing TB will let me do is delete the new blank email that I want to send (once it is completed). I have not got the foggiest idea of what to do to fix the problem.

Hello, and thanks for the read...

ISSUE: Every day I have to call the telecom ROGERS that took over for telecom SHAW, turn IMAP and Pop3 on 9 Email accounts (they lost 1). Sometimes the 1 to 2 hors chat w/ a human turned it back on will not last long.

DETAILS:

1. I can receive outside Emails *because I can't send using Shaw/Rogers, checking for Email, just hangs at trying to login in to any of the 9/10 emails.
2. When I can get a support person to check, they tell me that IMAP and POP3 are turned off.
3. They will tell me they re-enabled it. But it doesn't enable for me.
4. It all works OK when using the online webmail Zimbra. However, I need to check 3 of the 9 email accounts every hour, others every 6 hours, and others once a day at boot.

QUESTION: When using POP3, does the setting on my SMTP need a special setting on Thunderbird?.

NOTE: I am complying with "Rogers With Shaw" passing the buck to the Email Client (Thunderbird) by asking here - "Could It Be The Email Client'! And my answer is 'No', because Thunderbird works perfectly with 54 other Email accounts.

Thank for reading this, and for any input you may add, ~r

P.S., I'd like to see a upgrade to this input form that allows us to Preview out Post And, when I started this Post, it alerady had a image from a previous Post

Since setting up Yahoo email on TB using POP3 setting, I noticed that while all my Inbox messages remain when downloaded on my PC, the Sent messages are being gradually deleted to leave only the most recent (currently) 11 messages, like it is if I log in online to Yahoo webmail. Does this mean I need to configure it to IMAP as well to make sure nothing is deleted once downloaded to TB on my PC?

On 6th Feb 2026 a professional set up Thunderbird [149 I think] on my Desk top computer, running Windows 10, with 2 email addresses. Last week I found I could receive emails on both, but not send on either. I know the passwords for both the addresses, but even if I put them in when asked, I still could not send. Then I found I was not receiving e mails on either address as well. I am 87 and may have changed something important, in an effort to find a solution, as last Friday [27th March] thunderbird crashed. I sent the report to thunderbird. Yesterday I received the previous day's emails and current ones. Today [29th] I am receiving, but not able to send again, My email default is set as Thunderbird. For many years I was with Plusnet, but recently I had to transfer to Greenby. I checked their Web mail when I was not receiving emails and they were on their Server. I can make simple changes in Account Settings eg Port, Outgoing Server, Security.. Is there a simple solution or should I call the Professional again? Thank you.

Thunderbird will not get my mail. It continues to send mail but will not fetch it,

I tried to delete the account in thunderbird, It will not reestablish the account. I can use a web login to get to my email on the server but the identical credentials will not establish the account in thunderbird, I can establish an account in Outlook but not thinderbird.

Nie mogę wysłąć wiadomości. Przy póbie wyslania odpowiedzi na otrzyany e-mail wyświetla się taki komunikat

Wysyłanie wiadomości się nie powiodło. Wystąpił błąd podczas wysyłania wiadomości: błąd serwera poczty wychodzącej (SMTP). Odpowiedź serwera: * OK IMAP4 ready

When I try to send an email, Thunderbird says failed and asks for the outbound.att.net password. I've entered the correct password and the send fails again.

This started happening about a month ago, without me changing my settings, which are to retain all emails unless manually deleted. Probably relatedly, copies of sent emails are not saved in the Sent folder. This is my account on yahoo.co.uk - all the emails are available when I go to yahoo through my browser, so it is just Thunderbird that is not ertaining them. I automatically accept Thuderbird software updates (now 148.0.1)

Hey all, I installed the current version of Tbird on a couple of machines for a friend, one machine worked fine for a month or so, then started giving the "unable to write the email to the mailbox, make sure the file system allows you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox" error. There is a ton of free space on his C: drive, hundreds of GB. Yesterday I installed Thunderbird to another of his PCs, also no 3rd party AV (both running Win 11), same exact error after downloading a handful of emails from a few weeks ago. To make things weirder he took his laptop (the machine that worked ok for a short time) to his office, where he has a different ISP and it downloaded all of his mail! What is going on here? I have seen plenty of threads about this error, I tried compacting, repairing the folder etc, nothing fixes the problem and Thunderbird sits there not syncing his mail. At the bottom of the window it shows that there are 200 or so emails to download, it looks like they are downloading for a bit, then it quits trying and gives the error. Is there a known cause of this seemingly common error? Are Thunderbird devs aware there's an issue that renders their software unuseable for some users? His mail account is with Brightspeed, an old centurytel.net account. Please share any tips you may have for overcoming this error, thanks!

Hi folks. Suddenly I am having a problem with my e-mail account. I was working with T’bird this morning without any problems. Then I went to open my Firefox browser and I got a message that it wanted to upgrade to the latest version, which I did.

Now suddenly T’bird isn’t working. I got the message “ Enter credentials for (me) on smtp.gmail.com”. It has given me a Sign in page. My e-mail address was populated. Clicked on Next and got a message from Google “400. That’s an error. The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That’s all we know”

I haven’t made any changes to T’bird. My smtp is still the same. I have just looked at my Gmail on my iPad and the only thing I notice is on the menu list there is a link to ‘upgrade’ - I am not risking that yet!

Any suggestions?

I’ve tried all versions of Thunderbird on my 2020 M1 Mac, and even though I log in correctly, it doesn’t load emails from my account. I used to use Thunderbird normally because I needed it, but I haven’t used it for two months, and now I see that it doesn’t work when I try to connect to my email. It connects to my email normally, but the problem is that when I click on “Inbox,” there's nothing there, and when I click “Fetch Mail” to try loading it again, a message pops up at the bottom saying everything is fine, but in the end, I still don't have those emails. What kind of error is this?

Thunderbird version number: 148.0.1 Mail provider: Yahoo Client OS: Windows 10

The issue and steps I tried to resolve: On 1 Jan 2026 I switched from Outlook client on my Windows 10 PC to Thunderbird 146.0.1. I did not import any user data from Outlook but started with a clean install of TB for the new year. I use yahoo.com with POP3 as my email provider. Server Settings: Server Name "pop.mail.yahoo.com", port 995, SSL/TLS, OAuth2 Outgoing Server: Server Name "smtp.mail.yahoo.com", port 465, SSL/TLS, OAuth2

it all worked fine and I was very happy with the setup. Then from early to mid-February I was unable to use my computer. When I finally accessed Thunderbird again, it connected to Yahoo and showed that approximately 800 email messages would be downloaded and started downloading them. After downloading about 100 messages, Thunderbird timed out and I haven't been able to get it to work since.

I have read and followed or tried to follow these articles plus others that I may have forgotten about (not listed in any particular order) - OAuth2 Authentication for Yahoo, AOL and ATT | Thunderbird Help - including all the steps in Please check the following before asking for support - POP access settings and instructions for Yahoo Mail | Yahoo Help - Automatic Account Configuration | Thunderbird Help - Manual Account Configuration | Thunderbird Help - Thunderbird and Yahoo | Thunderbird Help - Send and receive messages in Thunderbird | Thunderbird Help - Can no longer get emails | Thunderbird Support Forum | Mozilla Support - Emails suddenly stopped downloading to Thunderbird 140.2.1esr | Thunderbird Support Forum - Get Messages | Thunderbird Support Forum | Mozilla Support - Cannot receive messages | Thunderbird Help - Problem with Thunderbird working with Yahoo Mail acccounts. | Thunderbird Support Forum

I have removed all messages from the Yahoo inbox and tried to find one or more messages that may be affecting the download. I don't know the best way to determine that.

I use Windows Defender for my antivirus. I don't see anything in Defender that blocks or scans email messages which would prevent downloads, although I could be wrong about that. if this might be the issue, please provide some guidance about how to check Defender.

I have uninstalled and re-installed Thunderbird. In the process I downloaded the setup file for Thunderbird Setup 148.0 and installed that version. It later auto-updated to 148.0.1. Before installation, I removed all external connections from my Yahoo account and completely removed Thunderbird from my PC, including the profile and profile.ini. When I reinstall and switch the account to POP3, Thunderbird captures the App password from Yahoo and connects just fine. But it still times out while attempting the first download of a message. The first several times it timed out, an error message was displayed but now it doesn't show anything. Except no messages are downloaded.

At this point, I don't know what else to try. Since I don't have much experience with Thunderbird, I don't know how to troubleshoot the process (logs to look at, etc.). I don't want to go back to Outlook but I need the email client to work and download messages. Any help would be much appreciated.