Thunderbird Community Forum

I'm using Thunderbird 115.18.0 and just today it's behaving bizarrely. Crashed twice for no reason, and emails are taking "forever" to delete -- normally they delete immediately (unless they have an enormous attachment), but today I have to wait about 4 seconds for one short text only email to delete. Compacted folders, and made no difference.

Any ideas? Anything I can do to return to my normal I love Thunderbird condition?

Thanks.

Thunderbird is downloaded new messages, but I can only see the Welcome to Freedom screen and cannot click into and see any emails in any folder. I see that numerous emails were downloaded, some going to the inbox, other into the spam folder. However, when I try to view them, all I see is the Thunderbird "Welcome to Freedom" main screen and cannot view any emails in any folders. Clicking onto different emails and their folders all show that same main screen.

suddenly it's taking minutes to send an email - if it sends at all. Many times I get a 'failed' pop up window but when I click SEND again it will sometimes go through. Also Some of my emails aren't coming up - only a few of them. And they aren't un-bolding.

I have had Thunderbird from the time I acquired my Mac computer. This week it started to do something new. After a restart I opened Thunderbird. A box came up that says across the top System Integration. The cursor balloons, and hasn't stopped for the time I powered the computer, as least fifteen minutes. You know how the program icons are in a dock across the bottom. With other browsers open, hitting the Thunderbird icon doesn't bring its window into the forefront. This needs either a reset, or possibly a backup first. Is there a quicker way to fix this? Thanks in advance. I am not using a VPN; but I also have Thunderbird on my Windows 11. You might have seen a more recent thread on that installation. I included a screenshot. It was easier here to do that than on the Windows 11. On the Mac, I just had to use Activity Monitor to close out of Thunderbird in order to get its version.

I download my e-mail from Yahoo using POP3 and OAuth authentication. Downloading works fine until I reach a particular e-mail. Thunderbird says "Downloading message 27 of 52" (or whatever) and then it will stall and eventually timeout. When I go into Yahoo webmail and archive the next message out of the inbox, the rest of the e-mails download.

I know exactly which e-mails can't be downloaded. They are from my Moen Flo account (a device that monitors water use at my house). It is not spam, and it is vital that I receive these e-mails. So identifying the problem e-mails and deleting them via Webmail will allow Thunderbird to download the rest of my e-mail, but it doesn't solve the problem. I saw someone else on the forum had the same problem with USPS tracking e-mails. There are probably more legit e-mails that cause Thunderbird to choke.

Having to go in to webmail every day and delete every legit e-mail that causes the downloading to fail is not a solution. If the e-mail client doesn't work unless you go into webmail first, then what's the point?

Not an ISP problem - I can download with another e-mail client through the same network.

Not an antivirus/firewall problem - I tried it even after uninstalling antivirus and turning off Windows Defender.

This is definitely a Thunderbird problem. I am 30-year IT professional and I have tried everything to narrow it down to this.

So how can we get the developers to look at whatever combination of characters is causing Thunderbird to choke when attempting to download e-mail? I have sample e-mails that reliably cause the problem.

Thank you.

When I went to open Thunderbird this morning it told me the programme was already running. It certainly was. There were an infinite number of Thunderbirds running! After failing to close them all, I closed down the computer and started it again. Thunderbird was veryslow to load and when it did, the display for my inbox was of emails from four years ago. I strted to scroll down using the mouse but then I noticed it was scrolling by itself. Eventually it reached today and had downloaded some messages.

The system is though running very slowly, it takes a while for a message to open and messages which I have left open at the top of the screen for action are not showing subject or content. I operate a complicated system of filing in subfolders of messages I need to keep for reference and the subfolders seem to be ok.

I started using Thunderbird many years ago when a IT friend recommended it because, unlike Outlook, Thunderbird has an infinite capacity. I am wondering however if I have taken that too literally? I must have thousands of emails in my IN box going back years, plus a structure of some subfolders which are never used. Is that likely to be why I am having problems and would I be well advised to do a bit of a mega clear out? Advice please from the more tehnically skilled would be much appreciated! Carol

I see others are having this same issue with no resolution in sight.

The company I work at is unable to print anything through the print preview in Thunderbird. The current work around is to download, open, then print the file.

Does anyone have any further information on this subject besides going through separate avenues to fix the problem?

Thanks!

Sending email has gotten very slow even for text messages. This started happening a few weeks ago & I didn’t think much about it. But something is not right.

I hit send & the little status window just sits there “Status: Sending Message”. The Progress bar shows all blue as if the email has been sent. But the screen just sits there.

This is on 3 different profiles where I have deleted trash & compacted folders.

If I login to the AT&T website & send messages they go through in a flash. Just like they used to do with Thunderbird.

I'm presuming the issue is with Thunderbird (vers 91.13.1). However I have not changed anything.

What could be affecting multiple profiles? Any suggestions how to fix this? Thanks

This post is more for posterity than asking for a solution because all similar topics ended up being Avast antivirus interfering or something less nefarious.

In my case eM client started having this problem first, then I switched to TB, but the same issue here. Of all places, the best clue was found on [[Linux mint|https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=213352]] forums. It was a permission problem. Right click on C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird -> properties -> security. I did two things and not sure which one did it, but they pretty much achieve the same. ...

The Users group in the list only had read permissions so I gave it full access to the folder and checked the option to set the same permission changes to all subfolders. I also added my own personal user to that list and gave that full permissions. Oh yeah, also changed owner to myself from whatever default windows group was there before.

Now, do I know the full repercussions of doing this? No. Pretty sure this just created a security hole inside my C drive, but... I don't really care at this point. If I had to fix this again, a solution might be to instruct TB to store the the email files somewhere else rather than where it is installed itself (somewhere less locked down than Program Files).

It's very odd. Normally moving an email, say from the Inbox to the relevant year's archive, takes "no time at all".

Which is true for all the mailboxes shown on the attached screenshot, EXCEPT for the four at the bottom. Moving even one message from Inbox to Yiddish can take ten seconds or longer (with the dreaded "Not Responding" occasionally). Moving something in the opposite direction is also screwy, only from those four.

I had thought that it was because they're rather large. This first started when there were just Yiddish and MSW, and I split off most of the earlier years into the archives shown. To no avail.

It's only an annoyance, but I'm puzzled about how such a thing could happen.

Also very slow tagging or untagging a message just in those mailboxes.

Hi, I've been back to Thunderbird since May, and while I'm happy to be moving away from gmail.com I find the experience with thunderbird a little disjointed and frustrating.

And it would be fine if it was not also sluggish.

I have approx 100'000 emails in All mail, 15'000 mail in inbox,203 mail folders and 160 email rules each with about 3 sub-rules each.

When I get a 2 Factor message sometimes it only take 10 seconds, sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes it never appears until I press the "check mail" button, it's never clear what "check mail" even is doing, if anything at all.

My computer is a 16 core Ryzen 5950x with 64gb ddr4 and it is otherwise very fast and I don't have any crapware installed like "mcaffee anti virus" or whatever.

I can't tell but it feels like it is applying every rule to every email in "All Mail" every single time and I'm pretty sure that is why it is so slow.

However the interface is very obtuse about what it is doing, so I have a hard time finding what the problem is.

Now, I am not going to delete my messages and I am not going to have fewer rules. but I think the rules should only be applies to newly received messages and that should only take milliseconds. Also, it should be easy to tell, what it is doing and how much time that takes ?

This indicator, is mostly meaningless

And this window, really doesn't say that much about what it is scanning

If it were saying how many email and which folders it applied rules to

It would feel a lot less sluggish if I was able to see what it is doing and be to tell if it is doing something or just hanging, it is very frustrating to wait and not even be sure if anything is happening at all !

And I greatly suspect that my problem is that it is applying All rules to All mail, not just the new mail, and if that was fixed and the activity manager made more descriptive and responsive, it would not feel so slow and frustrating and I would know what to change to make it faster !

But right now, if I didn't have such distaste for google, I would just go back to gmail which never made me wait more than 2 seconds for anything.

Hello David and thank you for your prompt answer. The situation between my mails ubfortunately remain the same. Nothwithstanding my re-installation of Thunderbird. I run a "HP ProDesk 200 GS MT" PC with Windows 11 and full virus protection etc. I clean my PC and run troubleshooting regularly. Never any problem. And now: Thunderbird opens at command and can be moved on my screen with minutes of delay. I can select mail address book and calender but I can not use them. Incoming ermails show on the screen but I can noy open them. If a drag an incoming mail to my Explorer app, then Explorer gets blocked and I must restart my PC. I can not open the Send Mail function. I can not open older mails on the Expolrer. Thus I am completedly stuck. Can you fix this problem? In case you can not assist me, I will load the Outlook program to get going. Pleas send tour commenst ASAP. Yours Jarl Jaatinen, Finland

I reported this to you by last Friday but I have received no response so far. After reporting to you, I tried all possible trouble tests and checks, then took following steps. 1 - I deleted my copy of Thunderbird from my PC 2 - I loaded a new copy of Thunderbird - all went well 3 - But situation remains, the program opens, reacts very slowly to commands but I can not get into any functions. Thunderbird does not show any emails, nor can I read older emails stored on my computer 4 - I ask you kindly for speedy help, my email function is fully down. Yours - Jarl Jaatinen - Finland

I don't know where to start. Ever since the update to version 154 I've been having one problem after another: switch from Comcast to Yahoo causes problems with THunderbird, slow indexing, arbitrary folders showing up in different email addresses (confuses my account with my wife's' some of that may be problems dealing with gmail issues), lost email folders after attempted repairs. Three months ago there were none of these problems. I have not yet tried switching back to the last updated version of 153, but 154 does seem to have many more problems. I've run troubleshooting.

I am not a computer expert and there is only so much time I can devote to this, but even computer repair services I've called are at a loss and very pessimistic about the ability to repair things. In all the years (over a decade) my wife and I have used Thunderbird, there have never been as many problems as have surfaced in the last two months. Maybe the best that can be done is to hope that updated versions will gradually fix these issues. I will say that my Macbook Air (M2 chip) has far more problems than my iMac (M1 chip). I have checked and rechecked all server settings (smtp and imap). Although more cumbersome, things perhaps work better if I just stick to webmail options.

Latest version of Windows 11 Thunderbird has stopped displaying the message body in the message pane ( right side of the screen) . I have another email client that displays the message body perfectly. It does display the message body of any messages save in a folder but will not display newly received messages in the pane. When I click on the message sometimes I get a white blank screen in the message body display pane. HELP!

In the last month or 2, when I delete an email it does not show in the trash folder. I can wait from 5 minutes to even the next time I reboot my puter to finally see it it trash. Sometimes it sends it to the all mail or important folder instead of trash. And if I delete from there, it still takes tons of time to end up in the trash folder...if it even gets there. This seems to be getting worse by the day. I have clicked repair folder, no change, I have cleared Thunderbird's cache, no change. It's also now taking way too much time to load an email that contains a picture. This happens with at least 3 of these gmails. I'm at a loss here and extremely frustrated and about to change these gmails from imap to pop. win10 and TB is up to date. But it doesn't compact folders as much as it used to either. Any help appreciated

All of a sudden I have to open the program twice for it to run. First time the screen opens but it is just blank and says it is not responding. So I close it and then open it again and it is fine. Anyone know why this is happening?

I'm not sure what to categorize this as, but here goes...

I came in this morning and noticed that my Thunderbird screens are pixelated. The pixelation changes a bit as I move my mouse over the menus and comes/goes when looking in screens like the Filter Rules. The Filter Rules screen is much more heavily affected. I just ran the update to 154.0 and it is still like this. I am viewing it on a laptop screen, not my large external monitor. Firefox is displaying just fine as are other programs I am running.

T-Bird is Freezing (Hang?) from start to freeze was 5 minutes and a few seconds. Have turned off hardware acceleration and now it freezes at just under 5 minutes. Have put on updates. Currently 153.0.1esr (64-bit). I have captured profile, and re-installed and picked up the profile. Still freezes. Turned off AV. Still freezes. I have compressed and "repaired" all folders. Still Freezes. I forced folders to get rid of anything older than 30 days. Still freezes.

I have been running the task manager, and T-Bird in frozen state is only using 4.3% of CPU at most. I do not see any slowdowns for any other program. So this is not a CPU constrained problem. And it certainly is not memory constrained.

All this started within the past month and I think it was after I put on an ESR update (don't remember which one).

I can kill T-Bird and start it and it will get mail if any, and will function for about 5 minutes and then freezes (or hangs). The system is set to fetch mail on start up and then every 27 minutes. I am not using Account hub (and don't know what it does).

One oddity -- This is a W11 Home system, and Mozilla keeps saying it is a W10 system. Could this be the problem? Wife is running a lesser laptop. It is also running T-Bird, but her O/S is a W11 Pro and she is not having this problem.