Thunderbird Community Forum

Had a double disaster, both OS partially upgraded at same time due to space issues and had to wipe and install.

Ended up with a TB install in Ubuntu where 2025 emails are missing. (see image #1) Found out that my backup should have most of them. (see image #2)

How do I safely identify the 2025 mail content in my backup folder, and how do I safely copy them over to the existing set up?

I see that the 933 profile exists in both so most likely it should be one of the lower number profiles in backup I need.

Attached are images of folder content.

Many thanks in advance!

I have recently installed Thunderbird to help me with my overfull Yahoo account. I installed it using the default Yahoo authentication which seems to work fine. Since Yahoo exposes at most 100,000 messages in any one mail folder, and my inbox had over 250,000, my goal is to spread those out amongst a few different folders so that I can manage the inbox more effectively offline. To that end, I set up a couple of saved search folders, each of which selects e-mails within a two-year date range. Incidentally, each only selects about 1,000 messages at a time, not the 40,000 or so each of those time periods seem to contain. When I use my Ctrl-A shortcut to select the messages in one of the 'search' folders, then move those messages to my Yahoo mail folder under my e-mail account, the messages initially are wiped from the saved search folder, but after a few minutes they all return!

Incidentally, the saved search folder has the same name as the folder I'm trying to copy the messages to, but the search folder is under the Inbox, and the other folder is 'beside' (not under) the Inbox.

Let me know if there is a more efficient and effective way of doing what I want. Ultimately, I want well under 100,000 messages in my Inbox.

Thank you

When I delete mails they remain in the Gmail All Mails folder. I have set the setting to move deleted messages to Trash (attached) and I always Empty the Trash manually. In All Mail all the deleted mails are present. In the attached screendump from Gmail webmail it is the mails without any labels in front. (I have unsubscribed to All Mails in TB, but previously these messages would show up as only present i All Mail when searched in TB). Is there a synchronization problem? I have noted that there are two Trash folders in Gmail webmail: 1. in:trash (where Gmail webmail is putting deleted mails which do NOT show up in All Mails) and 2. label:[imap]-trash (where TB is putting deleted mails which DO show up in All Mails). Is that the problem?

Additional question: is there an easy way to permanently delete the mails without label i All Mails?

Mail filters for custom headers like List-Unsubscribe, Authentication-Results or Received-SPF copying messages from IMAP accounts to Local Folders do not work on the Yahoo! IMAP account. For example:

filter1.jpg: name="_Inbox2: List-Unsubscribe <https" enabled="yes" type="17" action="Copy to folder" actionValue="mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Inbox/_Inbox2" action="Stop execution" condition="OR (\"list-unsubscribe\",contains,<https)" (should copy messages from IMAP folders to _Inbox 2 on Local Folders)

filter2.jpg: name="Spam: Authentication-Results dkim=unknown | Received-SPF fail | X-Antivirus-Status Infected" enabled="yes" type="17" action="Copy to folder" actionValue="mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Junk" action="Stop execution" condition="OR (\"authentication-results\",contains,dkim=unknown) OR (\"authentication-results\",contains,dkim=perm_fail) OR (\"authentication-results\",contains,dkim=none) OR (\"received-spf\",begins with,fail) OR (\"received-spf\",begins with,softfail) OR (\"received-spf\",begins with,none) OR (\"x-antivirus-status\",is,Infected)" (should copy messages from IMAP folders to _Inbox 2 on Local Folders)

But filter3.jpg works well: name="Inbox" enabled="yes" type="17" action="Copy to folder" actionValue="mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Inbox" condition="OR (subject,doesn't contain,t[k\6iq69pd+}'cr)" (copies all remaining messages from IMAP folders to Inbox on Local Folders)

(the snippets above are fragments of the msgFilterRules.dat file)

Filters1 and 2 work well on other IMAP accouns, like for example wp.pl. So this is about Yahoo or something is corrupted. My question is, what wrong is here ? And by the way - how to create filter copying all messages from IMAP to Local Folders ? Is better way then filter3 looking for random string in the subject or somewhere else ? Thank you.

I have been using Thunderbird with two POP3 Hotmail accounts for some time and I am trying to set up a third account with exactly the same configuration. However, both the automatic and the manual configurations failed. The new account receives mail, but the outgoing smtp server config seems to have a problem. Sending messages times out or keeps prompting for a new password.

The Hotmail account has POP3 and IMAP enabled. Thunderbird is set to receive all cookies. I cleared history and cache after every attempt and also temporarily disabled the firewall.

Any suggestions about what the problem could be?

Hi I cannot add my BT mail account. I keep getting authentification error. I can use Firefox to login to my email account so I know the password is ok. The account recently had 2 step verification added. Could this be the problem? My email account has two sub email id's. I have added both these email addresses to Thunderbird and they work fine. I use POP3. The two addresses that were added were done using the automatic installation. I have tried to manually setup the problem address but to no avail.

It may be a BT problem because I tried to change my password, I went through all the on screen prompts and received confirmation of a password change but I still can only login to my emails using Firefox with the old password. The new password doesn't work.

For the life of me I can't understand the options in View>Folders. The folders in my 3 accounts are sorted differently. In all 3 accounts I simply want 4 folders visible: Inbox, Sent, Spam and Trash. I've already tagged them as 'Favorite Folders' Making selections in the - View>Folders is very confusing for me. Why are there 2 Favorite folders in the list??

James

Hi all

I have recently downloaded Mozilla thunderbird, but am having trouble with adding accounts (outlook and gmail). I keep getting the "Authentication failed" error. Have tried other solutions online, like disabling the Account Hub, but nothing changes. I understand that may no longer be a solution. Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks in advance.

I have daily tasks that I dismiss every morning. When I open the Tasks tab, all the dismissed tasks are still there. Is there a delete the completed tasks so they don't clutter the task list? The attached image shows my list of dismissed task, all in red.

Hi, I use thunderbird as both POP and IMAP through gmail. I keep all my emails on my POP thunderbird desktop client. I use IMAP on my thunderbird laptop client, iPhone, iPad via Apple mail when remote, then download the emails to my desktop.

What I want to do is read emails and set them to archive on my IMA laptop, iPhone, iPad. I know Gmail tags the archived emails. How do I stop thunderbird from downloading the archived emails to my POP thunderbird desktop client?

Thanks! Art

I have everything I need from my old machine except my e-mail filters. If I copy the whole profile I will lose all of the sent messages and saved messages I have generated since I got Thunderbird up and running on my new machine.

If you turn on "Show Timezones" in the New Event window, then close it, and open a New Event window again, the time zones will be shown, but the option will not be checked in the settings, checking it now will hide it instead

Hi, I use my Thunderbird installation as a feed reader for RSS. Unfortunately, there are two feeds which aren't updated any more. I can't find an error. The feed is OK, I checked the XML file - the new entries are in the feed. The same feed works with a different feed reader. I already deleted the feed and added it again to Thunderbird. That didn't help. I don't know how to find the error. One of the not working RSS feeds is this one: https://mastodon.social/@islieb.rss

When I execute "right click -> Get Messages" on the feed, nothing happens. No error message... What can I do to find the error?

I'm running Fedora Linux 43, Workstation Edition; Thunderbird 140.10.2esr from Flathub. Everything's up to date.

Thanks, Simon

I use Thunderbird and received a message about an update which I allowed. I went to another app and when I checked Thunderbird all of my data is gone. The only folder Mozilla Thunderbird folder reads: tobedeleted. It is empty. All of the data is gone. Is there a way to retrieve it? PD - [edited from public] @gmail.com. My desktop runs Windows 10 only.

I use the filters in Thunderbird a lot, so I am familiar with the setup. I need to automatically forward a message to my wife if it comes in from a specific email address. I cannot see a way to do this. Is it possible?

Version 140.10.2esr | Released May 8, 2026 I get this message every time: Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because connecting to Outgoing server (SMTP) mail.twc.com failed. The server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. Please verify that your Outgoing server (SMTP) settings are correct and try again.

Thank you, George Correia

• I am able to convert emails to tasks in Gmail
• I am able to flag emails in outlook to be read into Microsoft To Do
• I can tag emails in Thunderbird but then what?
• I have not seen an extension for this

I have MCI and i need to get tasks organized including todo items in email and calendar apps. Any help would be welcomed.

RE: How to turn OFF message preview when I single-click on message?

When in TB message list, and selecting a message for an operation by making a single-click on the message, the selected message opens. When using CNTL key to select several messages together for an operation, each of the messages opens an individual preview pane. I have searched TB's knowledgebase, but apparently no other users have this problem.