I do not know how.

There's a little more information that persists in the activity manager window: Tools (menu) > Activity Manager

Are you looking for specific information?

It's just that when a 'status' message appears and then disappears before I have had a chance to read it then I need to find out what it was. Your info about the Activity Manager will let me about what it was 'after' the fact but not 'during' which is what I am after.

Have each account check for new mail with a different frequency, e.g., 3, 5, 7, and 11 minutes.

How is that going to help? The only difference is that the new mail 'status' messages will appear two minutes apart. They, and any other, 'status' messages will still disappear just as quickly as they currently do. Also it won't effect any of the other 'status' messages that are displayed.

Maybe I need to put in an enhancement request for this and hope that it is easy to implement.

How is that going to help? The only difference is that the new mail 'status' messages will appear two minutes apart. They, and any other, 'status' messages will still disappear just as quickly as they currently do. Also it won't effect any of the other 'status' messages that are displayed.

I don't know if it would help. It is worth trying. Costs only a couple minutes. One reason why it might work is that Thunderbird may be multi-threading to check four accounts at the same time and, since your network connection seems fast, it doesn't have much time to display the status messages for each. I have only one account. On the rare occasions when I want to read the status bar, the messages appear long enough to be read.

It may also be that Thunderbird is programmed to display each message for only a set period of time, and this approach will have no effect.