Right click the account, select settings and change the entry. in account name

when i right click the account name is shown (correctly) as my.wife@ntlworld.com

well check the others listed there. obviously one of them is wrong.

hi matt, thanks for your persistence but still doesn't help. I have three accounts . first one  :- j.f.thomson@ntlworld.com out/smtp google mail - smtp.ntlworld.com (default) second one :- jim.thomson65@gmail.com out/smtp google mail - smtp.ntlworld.com third one :- sue.thomson1@ntlworld.com out/smtp google mail - smtp.ntlworld.com

here is what i see when i open TB

Jumping into this thread I am puzzled by your outgoing server names. All three appear to be the same, and you have them as 'google mail - smtp.ntlworld.com': I don't know what that means. I have a gmail account and an ntlworld account. For the gmail account the server is smtp.gmail.com and for the ntlworld account it is simply smtp.ntlworld.com. Are you sure you have set them up with the correct outgoing servers for each?

hi amanchesterman, the accounts have been set up like that from day 1 (3-4 years) and have all worked perfectly . the problem is with the wife's account - if you look closely at the image you can see that she is being asked for a password on sue.thomson1@ntlworld.com@ smtp.ntlworld.com

there is obv. something wrong with the two @....@....but I can't see where to edit that.

sorry the second part should read @imap.ntlworld.com

Yes I had looked at the image and had read your correspondence with Matt, and was aware that you can't edit the ... @ ... @ ... In my experience of Thunderbird its error messages aren't always helpful. The fact that your wife is being asked for a password for this bizarre server doesn't mean that the server exists or even that a password is needed. That an error message appears is significant, of course, but I take it just as an indication that the smtp setup is problematic. So I was suggesting that you check that the correct outgoing server is assigned to each account. The server details you gave in your post -- 'google mail - smtp.ntlworld.com' -- don't make any sense: the server is either a gmail server (in which case it's smtp.gmail.com) or an ntlworld server (therefore smtp.ntlworld.com) -- it can't be both. I appreciate that things may have worked well for a long time. That's often true when people ask for help here. But settings can get corrupted, and things can be fine one day and broken the next. So I think it's worth checking that your server settings are as they should be!

hi a manchesterman

not too clear what you are suggesting i do. do i need to make ALL my outgoing servers EITHER smtp.gmail.com OR smtp.ntlworld.com .....

or do i need to make the ntlworld accounts smtp.ntlworld.com and the gmail accounts smtp.gmail.com

can you clarify before i do the deed ?

thanks

Hi again. I meant the second of the two options you describe and apologise that my post wasn't clear. You need to set up Thunderbird so that outgoing mail on the ntlworld accounts goes via smtp.ntlworld.com and outgoing mail on the gmail accounts goes via smtp.gmail.com. That's how it is on my setup anyway.

Hi Again, That seems to be the way it is on my setup - with the addition of googlemail before the smtp bit. I have tried to edit this to what you say but not possible and they all have googlemail to start. I have looked back and possibly my e-mail to matt was incorrect in that the second option was smtp.gmail.com instead of smtp.ntlworld.com as stated .........................which is where you came in. Unless you can offer any clues I am at a loss to know what to do now.

I think lets have a look at the account information as it appears in troubleshooting information on the help menu.

Copy to clipboard using the supplied button Paste into notepad. trim everything after the a Extensions section (Starting with Important modified preferences) Select all and paste into a message here.

While this will not give us the account names, it will show exactly what accounts Thunderbird thinks you have, as opposed to what you think your have. (they may be the same) but it will also show add-ons that may prompt a password check. The most obvious are those that sync contacts with the web, or synchronize calendars.

It may be you work out what is hat from the action and clear the message, if so just tell us.

Hi Matt, I'm in new territory here (I'm not a computer man, call me a silver surfer) however I think I follow what you're asking me to do so here goes .......................

Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 38.6.0
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.6.0
   Profile Folder: Show Folder

             (Local drive)
   Application Build ID: 20160211132445
   Enabled Plugins: about:plugins
   Build Configuration: about:buildconfig
   Memory Use: about:memory

 Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 38.6.0
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.6.0
   Profile Folder: Show Folder

             (Local drive)
   Application Build ID: 20160211132445
   Enabled Plugins: about:plugins
   Build Configuration: about:buildconfig
   Memory Use: about:memory

 Mail and News Accounts
   account1:
     INCOMING: account1, , (imap) imap.ntlworld.com:993, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: smtp.ntlworld.com:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true
     OUTGOING: smtp.ntlworld.com:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, false

   account2:
     INCOMING: account2, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext

   account3:
     INCOMING: account3, , (imap) imap.googlemail.com:993, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: smtp.googlemail.com:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true

   account4:
     INCOMING: account4, , (imap) imap.ntlworld.com:993, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: smtp.ntlworld.com:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true

 Crash Reports
   http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-72ba432c-0d24-4bf0-b969-ab9ab2160103 (03/01/2016)
   http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-9d250b6d-58e4-4bd4-9569-caa472160103 (03/01/2016)
   http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-1b8ec811-2be7-4ddd-af7a-c653b2160103 (03/01/2016)
   http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-ed518d21-f2eb-485c-86e8-a53e42151012 (12/10/2015)
   http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-fe344d27-e5f6-4b0c-956b-e125d2151012 (12/10/2015)

 Extensions

    Hope that's what you need - I can't see anything obviously wrong, even ticked the box to show that the account names are as I expect (then unticked for security) .

Looking at the crash reports I would guess the problem has been occurring since about the start of the year, so if that's any help ...............

Thanks for your help, Jim.

Now looking over those accounts, you have two Ntworld accounts and a gmail one. So there is no surprise there is is exactly as you thought it was. Although your main NTWorld account having two .SMTP servers attached indicates it has an identity.

Check that identity. the button is in the account settings you get when you right click the account in the folder pane and select settings.

It might be your not seeing the account name because it is the account name for the identity.

Hi Matt, I have looked at the two ntlworld accounts and everything looks to be correct. However, I noticed that there is no 'Deleted' folder under my wife's account. I tried to create a new 'deleted' folder within her ntlworld account also in her ntlworld inbox, and when I go and look, nothing has happened. When I looked in her Server Settings it only says 'mark as deleted' whereas in my account it says 'move to deleted folder' and 'delete on exit' I don't know if this is significant, but it appears to me that there is a problem with me not being able to create a new folder i.e. not seeing the account name

It's an IMAP-connected account, so everything is on the server.

I'd be inclined to delete the account and set it up afresh.

I think the main thing you could lose is your collection of filters (which could be preserved by copying msgFilterRules.dat from the previous account's folders) and maybe any customization you may have (unlikely unless you're using Folder Accounts or similar add-ons to tweak default behaviours.)

Hi Zenos, I thought of doing that some time ago but don't have the knowledge or the likely repercussions if things went wrong. I'm pretty sure I don't have any filters or other customization, just the very basic account settings. I'll give it a go ...................... what can go wrong ?

I've done it myself once or twice. No problems.

Just to check before you start, you can see all your messages on the ntlworld server via webmail?

Hi Zenos, Your warning came just too late, however all is well in that I can see all the past mail on webmail.

However, I have deleted the settings for my wife's ntlworld account in Thunderbird (after setting a new default account in gmail) and everything remains the same. How to delete everything in the folder pane in my wife's account ? And how to download the gmail messages into Thunderbird ?

Everything appears the same as before incl the error message when I open Thunderbird.

You mean you have deleted an account and can still see it?