Out of sheer laziness, I have continued to run (ancient) Thunderbird v24.3.0 on a Windows 7 machine until this past weekend, when I set aside 10 minutes to install the cu… (læs mere)
Out of sheer laziness, I have continued to run (ancient) Thunderbird v24.3.0 on a Windows 7 machine until this past weekend, when I set aside 10 minutes to install the current level of Thunderbird, and moved my mail data to a Win10 pc. As a point of minor interest, I use Mindspring (Earthlink) as my mail server: inbound mail is processed from an Earthlink pop server, and outbound mail is sent through a single secure SMTP server.
This migration involved these steps: (1) stop Thunderbird on Win7; (2) install v78.7.1 on Win10; (3) copy the Users\(id ..)\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird folder (and its subfolders, including the active profile) from Win7 to the same logical location on Win10 (I renamed the Win10 Thunderbird folder which was loaded as part of the new email installation as a safety measure).
Save for the behavior of email Reply/Reply All functions, all Thunderbird actions are behaving normally. These functions, though, are behaving bizarrely now with 78.7.1.
Before I describe the symptoms I see now, I'll note my Account Settings, which are unchanged from the old Thunderbird on Win7.
I have three accounts defined, as follows:
o MyID-1 -- this my default email id, and is defined to periodically check the mail server for new messages, and to look for mail when Thunderbird begins operation. It shares a single Inbox with the other accounts. Its Identity is MyID-1@mindspring.com. MyID-1 is my default address.
o MyID-2 -- save for the userid string, this account is otherwise identical to MyID-1. It too shares the single Inbox, and its identity is MyID-2@mindspring.com.
o OtherID -- this is a "backup" email id that is normally active on a different workstation here. Should that pc experience a failure, I could enable this account, and permit it to send and receive mail. It is defined now to never contact the pop mail or smtp servers.
On the chance that the userid/email-id strings may be causing odd effects:
. MyID-1 is a string of characters, say "abcde".
. MyID-2 includes MyID-1 as a subset, say "abcde89".
. OtherID includes MyID-2 as a subset, say "1abcde89".
And to reiterate, there is a single Outbound/SMTP server definition. The associated userid -- for id/password verification for server authorization -- is MyID-1@mindspring.com.
At last, then, here the errors I am experiencing. There may be other situations which cause similar problems, but these failures are consistent and easily repeatable.
1. New email arrives:
From: someone@gmail.com
To: OtherID@mindspring.com
To: MyID-1@mindspring.com
I select Reply All. This creates a new note as follows:
From: OtherID@mindspring.com
To: someone@gmail.com
To: MyID-1@mindspring.com
This symptom persists whether the original email is in the Inbox, or saved to another folder.
2. I have an email in my Sent folder, not yet moved to a more specific folder:
From: MyID-1@mindspring.com
To: OtherID@mindspring.com
Reply creates:
From: OtherID@mindspring.com
To: MyID-1@mindspring.com
3. Another Sent Mail Reply, with the original reading:
From: MyID-1@mindspring.com
To: MyID-2@mindspring.com
and Reply produces:
From: MyID-2@mindspring.com
To: MyID-1@mindspring.com
So to summarize: I can't think of a single reason why Reply or Reply All should _ever_ behave so as to:
(a) NOT use my default email address for the source of replies; AND,
(b) Reply TO an address different than the From: header in the mail being replied to.
I apologize for the length of this post! The good news is that I haven't found any other environmental or settings values that ought to be of interest, or this entry would be lengthier yet.
Many thanks -- in advance.
