Thunderbird Community Forum

This is the second time I've posted about this. I've tried everything and the problem is getting worse. Thunderbird is deleting messages from my inbox when I retrieve messages from the server. All my settings indicate this should not be happening, but it is. I use the IMAP interface and the latest version of Thunderbird.

This morning after I downloaded messages Thunderbird showed no messages in any of my folders, not even archived! What the heck is going on and how can I solve this? I will have to stop using Thunderbird unless I get this resolved -- and fast.

Kindly assist as i have been having challenges accessing my folders e.g Inbox and sent item box from my thunderbird. Additionally, the icons for add a new account have since disappeared

I'm unable to access one of my email accounts on Thunderbird. I put in all the correct settings multiple times and it keeps telling me I must have the wrong configuration.

Starting yesterday, cannot send E mils messages. Mediacom, my Internet provider says it is a server problem with E mail provider. Message started a "abusive practice- SMTP failure then changed to ESMTP after following provider's tech advice and emptied all JUNK. Now Monday AM---same situation---receiving E mail but cannot reply---will not send. Thank you Vic

I have recently installed Thunderbird on a Raspberry-Pi - additional to several Windows PCs

I'm using the same Mail-Adresses via Thunderbird - and on my MobilePhone - on serveral devices.

This all works fine...

But Thunderbird on the Pi has created two "SENT" Folders - one is named "Sent Items" - the other just "sent".

Now - only the one folder named "Sent items" connects with the IMAP - the one named "Sent" only remains local - Mails sent from the PI DO NOT show up in the "Sent" folders on the other devices - all mails sent from other devices show up in the Folder "Sent Items". But the Mails sent from the Pi actually reach recipients and receive answers.

The Location for the folders is listed under properties as:

imap://[username]@imaps.[provider]/Sent (on the PI) - folder "Sent" imap://[username]@imaps.[provider]/Sent%20Items (on the PI) - folder "Sent Items" and imap://[username]@imaps.[provider]/Sent Items (under Windows)

To solve the Problem, I tried to EDIT the line Location under properties, but this can't be edited (doesn't allow entries - or delete with cursor - nor pastes from Copy / Paste.)

So how can I synchronize the SENT folder(s) from the Pi with the Server...?

Thank you for any suggestions

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

Hi I was using TB 142 without problems. When upgrading to 143 ou 144.B4 I have problems sending mails to all users after some times. Usually the first mails are sent immediatly but after around 10 mails, I have very slow response (varies from 5 sec to more than 1 minute and sometimes timeout). Usually quitting TB solves the problem but this is very annoying. I went back to 140LTS and sems to have no longer this problem. This was tested on many diffrent networks. I am running under Fedora release 42

Thanks

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.

Have updated from 140.3.1 esr 32 bit to 143.0.1 release 64 bit TB and to windows 11 - uninstalled 32 bit and installed 64 bit and updated to windows 11 Following updates found that device sign in id (pin) was used to be in 32 bit missing from settings to access password but can show passwords. In reviewing the profile after update I note that Mozilla location service key, google location service key and safe browsing keys are missing (not sure what they were pre update). The key4.db file pre update was 1/3/22 but after update it is 10/10/25. The logins.json pre and post update is 7/9/25. I can see the default release profile and local only - use only the default release. My question is - has the 64 bit installation cleared all my keys/how can I check all my keys and how do I fix and ensure connections are secure?

Thankyou for any advice.

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 want to continue using TB but a few things really make me despair of it. But there may be workarounds. If I have a question, when did these people last send me an email, or have any of these people responded to something, there seems to be no way to get to a list. But. I found a way to do it. Using sqlite3.

I have been wanting a CLI for interacting with TB for a while. You know, that folder I have with 10k+ emails and if I click on it, the UI spins forever. What is even in that?

Now I can do this: 1) copy the global-messages-db.sqlite from the active profile to another place 2) run: sqlite3 global-messages-db.sqlite 3) ```sqlite> select m1.c3author, min(m2.date), max(m2.date) from messagesText_content m1, messages m2 where m1.docid = m2.id group by m1.c3author order by m1.c3author; ... ray kiddy <ray@ganymede.org>|1732124816000000|1759268233000000 ruby29@something undefined|1756740716000000|1756740716000000 salvatore@someother undefined|1758733831000000|1758733831000000 support@linode.com undefined|1755126295000000|1755126295000000 ... ```

Holy sender dates, Batman! Now I can see the earliest and latest email sent by any user. Now I can filter, sort, and see every person who sent me something in a time period. And whether it was 1 email or 1000, I just see the names and not an enormous amount of other information.

So, is this the only way to get this? Or the best? I have no idea. Please let me know if there is a better way, perhaps one using TB itself. It would be nice.

In the meantime, I will be wrapping this in a python call, doing some formatting and it will work and I can stop worrying about not seeing their email.

I have lost the indicator in the folder pane showing which folder I'm in. It used to have a small color tab in the folder pane on the left hand side. Indicating that the folder was selected. Any ideas to get it back? Thunderbird 140.3.1esr (64-bit)

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?

I have a message that is still listed after being deleted. When I highlight the messages listed above it and below it, I can see their contents with no problem. However, when I click on the "ghost message" listing in between them, I will see the contents of the last message viewed, not the contents of the ghost message that is highlighted.

Also, when I first open Thunderbird and highlight that ghost message first, the review pane is blank, like there is no message there. Then if I click on a different message, that message's contents will show in the preview pane. Then when I go back and click on the the ghost message listing, that pane is still showing the previous message's contents.

When I click on "delete" message, I get the constant blue indicator light in the lower right glowing and nothing happens.

Hi, I recently set up TB with one imap account. All fine. I set up a Local Folder as well - mainly to store bulk of old mails.

Then after couple of days, when I sent a message, the system warned me: "your message was sent, but a copy could not be placed in "Sent" folder" due to network or file access issues. Place a copy in local folder instead?"

I recognized, that also, while my account/server seems to connect, no emails at all are fetched from the server actually.

I think there's a strange problem TB internally with ... file access? How to repair?

UPDATE : I checked my TB profile folder, and found the "ImapMail" folder's properties (Win10) showed "read-only". So I closed TB, removed the "read-only" from folder and contents, and restarted TB. But issue persisted. I went back to "ImapMail" folder in my profile - and found it marked "read-only" again. So seems TB itself set it to "read-only", it seems.

Thank you for your advice. Chris

PS:

• Restart : nothing changed
• run in safe mode: nothing chnaged
• repaired folders: nothing chnaged

Yesterday I upgraded my PC from Windows 10 to 11. Today I discovered my Local Folders are not visible. Searching tells me the messages still exist, but TB does not show the folders. I did the same upgrade a month ago on a laptop (Windows 10 Pro to 11), no problems. I didn't externally back up the messages as I am a dinosaur and don't know how, but at least they are still on the hard drive. Thousands of them though so I need the local folders back. Tried all the fixes I can find on the Community Forum, without success. Can anyone help please? Bob

I would like help removing one of the folders called drafts as it is empty and uses the other for subfolders. I have tried right clicking but it has no effect on removing it. Only the draft folder where the subfolders are located can be removed. How do I remove the extra draft folder. Thanks in advance for your help.

I'm in the process of cleaning up Thunderbird e-mail before moving to a new computer. I started with 11,593 e-mails in my Inbox and 7,799 e-mails in my Sent folder. I'm now down to 7,634 in my Inbox and 4,965 in my Sent folder. I've allocated 2 weeks for this process and found that it's taking me about 3 hours per day to meet my daily goals. I'm finding that I'm spending at LEAST half the time responding to "Empty-Trash/Compact-folders" requests. There are times I can delete 50 e-mails at a time without getting a request. Other times I will try to delete ten e-mails and get the request. With the old version of Thunderbird I could literally delete hundreds of e-mails at a time. Can you help? Russ Bukwa Yardley, PA ps. I have intentionally given you specific numbers. Based on my software- and test-engineering experience, I speculate you need to create a stress test to solve this nagging problem.

HI all. This is a good one. I recently got a MAC, my first one, so dont know much about it. I installed thunderbird and can receive via IMAP but cant send via SMTP. I have smtp setup EXACTLY how it is on my windows PC which works. When I hit send on a message, it immediately comes back with "Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) <maileserver.com> timed out. Try again. This message comes back immediately, as in .000001 second. This particular mail server I own and is on my network, and checking the logs, the request never even gets to the server, so its not a server issue. (Again, it works for all my other devices and other clients). server info, password etc are correct. I tried deleting the account and recreating it but no go. From a command tool, I can telnet to my mail server on port 25 and it answers and I can interact. If I use the built in mac mail client, it works fine. So this is definitely a thunderbird issue from what I can tell. Thunderbird 143.0.1 (aarch64) on 26.0.1 (25A362) Any tips appreciated, Im ready to take a bath with a toaster. Thank you!