Forum der Gemeinschaft Thunderbird

When using Thunderbird 140 I am able to setup the background color of the message pane for individual messages. However when the messages are threaded, the message pane shows a preview of all of the threaded messages together in the message pane with a different background color than individual messages.

My problem is that JPEG attachments don't open, though PNGs do. I've got Original HTML actioned. Defaults are set to Fastone Image Viewer. Right click shows options but "open" doesn't work. Any ideas?

I haven't updated Thunderbird since version 52.9.1 because of the interfaces which are painful for me and I don't see much. it still works well but does not support encrypted emails. I would like to install a recent version of TB but how can I make it look like the older, much more configurable versions? Please tell me if this is even possible.

This is translated from French

I quite often get this message, though it tends not to be a problem later "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox"

One of the solutions seems to be Compact a File. How do I do this?

I have a Fedora laptop which has run Thunderbird on KDE Plasma for years.

I typically put the Thunderbird window on my big monitor where everything works as expected.

When I move the window to the laptop screen (or unplug the laptop and use it without the big screen), I can navigate the folder list in the left-hand pane, but the list of emails and body panes on the right do not display, only the Welcome screen.

When I put Thunderbird in Help > Troublehoot Mode, all works as expected.

The only special add on I use is the Get All Mail button.

Filters *unreliably* sort the mail into their target files. I have reconstructed the filters from scratch twice, both times with identical, unpredictable results: each filter works properly on the inbox when tested, but each filter only works *sometimes* in the normal course of getting (IMAP) and sorting mail. When getting a batch of mail, some messages are sorted, while others are not. When testing the same filters on the same (still unsorted but already picked up) messages, those same messages are recognized and sorted correctly. The question is: Why are the filters not working reliably during message pickup?

The mail server is running "Debian stable" Dovecot. It seems to work well; I'm not *missing* any messages, but they're not always getting into the right folders. Instead, some messages, and sometimes quite a few messages, may remain in the inbox. I surmise that the problem is in Thunderbird, where somehow the downloading process somehow undermines the sorting process. A queuing issue? A communications-with-Dovecot issue? (The server is in Paris and I'm in North America, but there doesn't seem to be any undue latency that I can detect. The server is not very busy, that's for sure.)

In case it helps: I filter mostly on `DKIM-Signature`, `Authentication-Results`, and `Received` header entries. In a couple of cases, I use `Body`. I'm almost always using "match any" (as opposed to "match all").

My Spectrum-TB connect was functional yesterday but is not working today; NO password or setting changes! Contacted Spectrum and was able to successful send an email from Spectrum's online webmail to a gmail account.

Hello,

since some years I use the facebook calender url in the calender tab.

Since some days the are no entries shown anymore.

The same calender url is correctly used in google calender (web & app)

The facebook url is as followed:

https://www.facebook.com/events/ical/upcoming/?uid=100001094911980&key=XXXVO6gUO0v9U63j

It would be helpful to have a solution or at least an explanation for this problem.

Best Regard Werner Heims

(from Germany with limited English knowledge)

Sorry - I feel as though I'm monopolising this forum at the moment!

In my Menu bar, I have Delete, but, using this, I can only delete emails from the Unified list, not individual accounts. I CAN delete from individual accounts if I select the email, right click and select delete. Seems odd

My Computer in Spain worked perfect wit my Emails until about 5 years ago when you upgraded thunderbird

Since Then it will not recognize my LOG IN passwords for both my Google email and my Plusnet email

I have had to access Gmail via there website but I like your set far better

I have had to access plus net via web mail which is very basic

Both Passwords work perfect in England

I have now set up another Computer and this time Thunderbird does recognize my Gmail password but still tells me my Plus net Password is not correct

I contacted Plus net last December from England and they confirmed that the Password is correct Have you any suggestions as to how I can solve this problem

I use windows 7 ON ALL MY COMPUTERS

Yours sincerely

Ron Goldthorpe

good day....ii hope someone can help. the other day i was accessing my yahoo account spam folder and by accident, i deleted the spam folder instead of emptying it. the spam folder is now sitting in the trash and i'm unable to remove it from there. when i log into my actual yahoo account, the spam folder is where it's supposed to be and not in the trash. i tried removing the yahoo account from thunderbird and reinstalling it in hopes that it would rectify the problem, but it hasn't. does anyone have a solution?? i would greatly appreciate any help you can offer. thank you for your time...mike s

Hi there! I and my colleague encounter some bugs with Thunderbird and we would like to seek your advice in regards of the issue.

1. <user a@citizen-systems.com.hk> was supposed to get a cc copy of the email sent by <user b@citizen-systems.com.hk> at Mon, 12 Jan 2026 09:35:19 +0800 but it never reached. The receivers, namely <user c@systems.citizen.co.jp> and <user d@citizen-systems.com.hk>, however, were able to get the mail. <user d@citizen-systems.com.hk> and <user a@citizen-systems.com.hk> are working at the same office and under the same network. Network provider checked the protocol, router, traffic and firewall are working as normal.

2. <user e@citizen-systems.com.hk> found a number of emails that she kept at "Inbox" disappeared on 12 Jan 2026 morning +0800.

She is unable to find it anywhere at her whole mailbox but has to ask the senders to resend them to her.

It would be very much appreciated if you can check and advise how to prevent the issue from happening again.

(PII redacted by moderator)

How could I setup a complex sorting rule? This rule I wish: 1. Sort by date and Group 2. sort Starred Mails at the top and unread mails second. 3. Group this also by DiscussionTread (Starred mails out of context is not helpfull)

I also would like to use this sorting on Android.

I have a windows 11 pc with thunderbird 147 installed. It worked until Jan 16th, 2026. I added the account to my Linux pc that has thunderbird 140.5 ESR inststalled and it works fine with the account from the windows 11 pc.

Thunderbird is reporting error "could not connect to server . . . the connection was refused." However, it seems that it reports this error only when there is no new incoming message. And it does not happen consistently.

Thunderbird is version 147.0. Operating system is the current version of Windows 11 on an HP desktop workstation, new 4 months ago.

I have 4 email accounts set up in Thunderbird. Server settings for the accounts are set to check for new messages at startup and at intervals of 5 to 10 minutes depending on the account and to automatically download new messages. I have confirmed the server settings for the accounts match the settings specified by the ISP. When there is a new message to be downloaded it seems that it does, in fact, connect automatically to the server and download when Thunderbird does its check for new messages at startup or specified intervals.

When I have open the Inbox for an account and click on the "Get Messages" icon or right-click on the account name and then click on "Get Messages" I usually promptly see at the bottom of the window the messages "Host contacted . . . sending login information . . . Checking inbox for new messages . . . there are no new messages to download." That is true even if I do that within seconds of receiving the "could not connect" error. But sometimes there is a delay of many seconds before the "host contacted . . ." message, and occasionally I never get that response to the click to get messages. When I click to "get messages" I never see the "could not connect" error even if the "host contacted" message does not appear.

I have set to show an alert and play a sound when new messages arrive. The same sound is played when the "could not connect to server . . ." error is displayed. The result is the sound may be played every 5-10 minutes. I can tell that this issue does not happen consistently because I might go for several hours, or even all day, without the sound and without the error message. The occurrence or absence of the error seems to be completely random and unrelated to what I may have open on the computer.

Since I do seem to be receiving messages without a delay in delivery this is perhaps no more than an annoyance, but I would prefer to avoid the annoyance. This is not happening on other computers here which are using Thunderbird.

I want to transfer my files from win10 to win11. I tried to use the thumbdrive but my files were too large. I also downloaded the Wave Browser,, but didn't like that. If I cancel my win10 and reinstall Thunderbird on my Win11 will it transfer? I'm looking for an easy method. I'm 83 and not that tech minded?

I have a message filter that copies every sent item to a local folder when I send it. I want this in addition to the normal sent item placed in the IMAP folder.

This works fine, except that when I reply to an email and the subject is prepended with "Re: ", the copy made in the local folder is not prepended with "Re: ".

Why is this, and how can I make sure the copy in local folders is prepended with "Re: " as it is in the IMAP sent folder?

We have Thunderbird installed on 2 computers and, for the last 3 days, we have been to receive, but not send email. We can log in to our email provider online and send from there with no problem, so it's strictly a Thunderbird issue. We use Graceba/WoW for our email/internet, windows firewall, PC Matic AntiVirus, Windows 11, and Thunderbird version 147.0 (this information is the same for both computers). When we try to send an email with Thunderbird, the following error message pops up: "Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because connecting to Outgoing server (SMTP) smtp.graceba.net failed. The server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. Please verify that your Outgoing server (SMTP) settings are correct and try again." Our outgoing server settings are correct; nothing has changed and no updates have been done. Something happened over the course of a day 3 days ago (it was fine in the morning and not fine in the afternoon) that caused us to not be able to send email. Please help!