Thunderbird Community Forum

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

I have used Thunderbird for years, so updated to/ installed the latest version 128. This updated a few days ago and since then with almost every action there is a 20 to 30 second 'not responding' delay. Windows has not updated in that time, though it might be a windows issue.

Since updating Thunderbird lately to 128.3.3esr (64-bit), "Open in conversation" is grayed out, SHIFT+CTRL+O shortcut also doesn't work. There is a small chance it happened on a previous update, I'm not sure. This function is something I use regularly so this bothers me greatly. I tried rebuilding the global database according to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database with no luck - the problem persists. The file now has 1,18 MB, I'm quite certain it was significantly larger before. The problem occurs in all accounts I have and it worked on all of them before. Threading itself works properly if I go to View>Sort by>Threaded so the messages are recognized as threads properly.

I'm getting the error when synchronising outlook email accounts that states "The current operation on 'Inbox' did not succeed. The mail server for account- Outlook responded: User is authenticated but not connected.

The email account was synching well until I updated recently to v128.4.4esr.

I searched around online and have tried the following suggestions: - network.dns.disableIPv6 -> true - delete outlook mail account and re-connect - clear startup cache

My ISP has changed the server settings but when I change the IMAP server setting Thunderbird asks me to restart and then restores the original setting. I want to keep my othr setgs and address books.

How do I fix this? I am using Thunderbird portable 1.8.2.0 and this is all in my Dropbox

How do you view full headers, these days? Supposedly View > Header > All, but in my version, View > Header does not exist, either when viewing in list format, or even after opening the actual email.... Thanks.

I have received an HTML-formatted message, which arrived with a red background colour. When I reply or forward that message, the message composition window appears with the same red background colour, and with black text. The resulting black text on a red background is hard to read.

How can I change the background colour of the reply or forwarded message which I am composing? How can I override the background colour set by the sender in the original message?

Note that I am asking about the background colour of a message which was set by the sender. I am not asking about how to set the default colour of messages I compose from scratch. Nor am I asking about how to set the background colour of Thunderbird windows or UI elements.

Thank you in advance.

When sending an email the contacts list in the left sidebar is not in alphabetic order, which is not very convenient. It used to be, but I don't know why it changed. Regards, Alan

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.

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?