This is a question for AT&T. They configure their servers.

I had contacted AT&T before putting it up on Mozilla, and they referred me to Mozilla. I managed to solve the problem though by setting up a new e-mail account in Thunderbird. Thunderbird immediately went into the server and got the new info, which I have already used to update my main e-mail account. In case anybody else has the problem, the incoming server is:

inbound.att.net

Similarly, the outbound server is:

outbound.att.net

Nothing else changes, but after you make the change you will have to retype your password to receive messages and to send messages.

A lot of people who use AT&T should have this problem, and why they don't tell anybody or make it challenging to find out amazes me. Further, why can't Mozilla pass on the info in the interest of having people continue to use the program?

1. Mozilla does not develop or support Thunderbird anymore so I not sure why you think they are involved.

2. Email providers configure their servers. Any changes they make should be relayed to their customers.

3. The standard answer from a brainless provider help desk is that is it someone else's fault. This makes you hang up and go away. Their job is complete.

4. Thunderbird is email client software running on your computer. You are in charge of it. You need to make any changes that your provider needs done to make it work with their servers.

Thank you for providing the changes that you made to help other AT&T customers.

I don't mind being in charge of my Thunderbird program but somebody has to be responsible to let the user know what changes need to be made, along with providing a way to do it. Apparently here Mozilla sees no responsibility for themselves and neither does at&t. If I was installing a Thunderbird profile for the first time Mozilla would automatically find the right info and insert it in the right place as part of the installation process. All you would have to do is provide a way to do that for an existing profile when change occurs. It's called being user friendly for people who may not have a lot of computer skills.

Maybe work on your reading skills. Thunderbird is NOT a Mozilla product anymore. Even if it was it is free client software. Mozilla nor the Thunderbird council now running the software has no responsibility to track changes that all email providers around the world make little alone notifiy anyone that might have downloaded their software of the changes.

If you have to be mad at someone it is AT&T. You know the company that you actually pay for a service.

Thank you tgilders for answering the question in spite of the fact that this problem is completely AT&T's fault. You're solution works not only for Thunderbird, but also for OSX Mail ... and I suspect for anyone else who'd been using ATT's old server IDs. I'd been using (pop | smtp).att.yahoo.net.

I actually suspected this was an AT&T server problem, but their troubleshooting website does not provide setup information for Thunderbird ... if you don't use one of the built-in clients for Microsoft or Apple systems, there's no configuration info for you. Soooo .... I called them and the helpful tech admitted they had a problem that they were "working on" and they didn't have a fix for it. They're supposed to call me back when they know what's going on .......... (still waiting .....)

Thanks for a useful answer that helped me and may help others who find there way here instead of spouting a terse rebuke for having the temerity to come here about a problem that isn't the Thunderbird team's fault.

Thanks for your reply. Lucky for me I already had several e-mail accounts set up on AT&T that I never use, so all I had to do was install one and Thunderbird found it for me. Seems like it would be a useful tool to just put in the program so it could search for it like it does when you first install an e-mail account. And yes, at&t was useless, as are most tech support groups. It really is sink or swim on your own out there. One other thing I discovered, it would be useful to have Password Manager in a location that you could find so if you enter the wrong password, as I did on my second e-mail account, you could find it and correct it. Ultimately I had to delete that profile and reinstall it to solve that problem, after which I had to transfer all the e-mails on that profile back from where I stored them.

Thanks for your reply. Lucky for me I already had several e-mail accounts set up on AT&T that I never use, so all I had to do was install one and Thunderbird found it for me. Seems like it would be a useful tool to just put in the program so it could search for it like it does when you first install an e-mail account. And yes, at&t was useless, as are most tech support groups. It really is sink or swim on your own out there. One other thing I discovered, it would be useful to have Password Manager in a location that you could find so if you enter the wrong password, as I did on my second e-mail account, you could find it and correct it. Ultimately I had to delete that profile and reinstall it to solve that problem, after which I had to transfer all the e-mails on that profile back from where I stored them.Airmail said

Maybe work on your reading skills. Thunderbird is NOT a Mozilla product anymore. Even if it was it is free client software. Mozilla nor the Thunderbird council now running the software has no responsibility to track changes that all email providers around the world make little alone notifiy anyone that might have downloaded their software of the changes. If you have to be mad at someone it is AT&T. You know the company that you actually pay for a service.

Password Manager

Click the 3 bar menu button Hover over Options and click Options when it appears Select Security-Passwords Click Saved passwords When the new Saved Logins window opens click Show Passwords You can either right click a password and select Edit or delete passwords.

Actually, I'm not mad at anybody, and I recommend that you do likewise. As to my reading skills, they are quite good actually when I take the time to read something. Looking at what would normally be a bunch of boilerplate when Thunderbird opens is not an area that I would expect to have to read every time I open the program.

I would like to make three suggestions, however; put something in the program similar to what you have for new e-mail accounts that would search for the right info just like it does when you set up a new one.

The second is to provide some way to locate where your password is stored so that you can delete if if you accidentally typed in the wrong one.

The third one is to suggest that putting out a terse reply to somebody like me might feel good in the moment but works against the long term goal of trying to get donations from people like me. Speaking of which, how does one go about making a donation?

See above for password location.

Details for donations are on the Thunderbird start page. You know, that boiler plate stuff. https://live.mozillamessaging.com/thunderbird/start?locale=en-US&version=45.7.0&os=WINNT&buildid=20170124052806

Thunderbird is programed and supported by volunteers so you can use it for free. It does not feel good when someone comes here placing blame for something that your email provider did.

Maybe AT&T sent you some boiler plate info about the needed changes.

Apparently you are still feeling good in the moment and I'll let it go at that because further dialogue or clarification from me about what I said or meant is going nowhere. I will make note of the location for donations, however, and see what I can do to support the cause, so let that be the end of it.

Many people have been having problems with AT&T today. I've helped several here. While they will never admit it, AT&T is definitely having problems with their servers.

This problem was entirely caused by AT&T.

What you did has been my first step today in trying to solve this same issue with other people. I'm glad you figured it out on your own.

To clarify about Thunderbird:

If you look at the article Wikipedia has for Thunderbird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird You will see that Mozilla doesn't care much about Thunderbird. But Thunderbird is still currently under the umbrella of Mozilla.

The people working on the Thunderbird project (all volunteers at the moment, except for one programmer just fixing bugs), are trying to find a new home for Thunderbird.

Thank you Bruce, for your reply. What I said before about the new at&t settings turned out to not quite be the complete story. It was straightforward for the incoming server, but for outgoing you have to be very careful not to change any of the other settings listed or it won't work. I also did not realize it would be so simple to get to Password Manager. Its under the tools menu in the options section.

AT&T did tell me something about incoming and outgoing server, but it was never that clear to me and I don't think to the person giving me the info. I would never have believed that those were the actual names until Thunderbird pulled it up. They definitely pushed me in the direction of Mozilla, and I, like most users, simply wanted somebody to solve it. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that they should have put out an alert on it for all their users. The thing is, Thunderbird had no trouble finding it as long as I was installing a new e-mail address, which is why I was suggesting that there be a tool like that for existing accounts. Somehow all that evolved into a reaction I don't think was warranted from the person called Airmail at Thunderbird who responded to me. I can only chalk it up to that person and others being under a lot of pressure at present.

I don't know how many use Thunderbird, but I've been using it and it's predecessor Netscape for probably over 20 years, and I like being able to store my messages on my own computer. I want you to know that I went ahead and donated $20 to your cause, which is actually our cause. I wish you success in the endeavor.

tgilders said

Nonetheless, there is no doubt that they should have put out an alert on it for all their users.

If you saying that AT&T should have put out an alert, they maybe they would if it affected enough people. But then most service providers on the Internet, especially the big ones, will not admit that there is a problem, but will still work on it in the background. They seem to prefer complaints of bad Customer Service, than admitting to problems with their core services.

The thing is, Thunderbird had no trouble finding it as long as I was installing a new e-mail address, which is why I was suggesting that there be a tool like that for existing accounts.

Theoretically, changes on e-mail servers are supposed to be seamless to the end user, and if changes in settings are needed by the end user, the e-mail provider is supposed to inform their users of them. Of course, that doesn't happen sometimes.

Your idea is interesting.

While Thunderbird is not currently implementing new features, you can still make a request for them on the Bugzilla website: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

It's been so long since I set up an account on Tbird that I had forgotten it would automatically set up an account. But that's a good thing to remember if this happens again. It looks like AT&T has fixed (the cert?) for the old in/out mail servers because the OSX Mail app on my wife's computer, which had the same problem yesterday, is now working ... and it still uses the old at&t servers.

tgilders said

Thanks for your reply. Lucky for me I already had several e-mail accounts set up on AT&T that I never use ..........

I first started doing e-mail back in the mid 1990s when I signed up with Pacific Bell, which later got rebranded as SBC Yahoo, and later just AT&T. At that time Netscape Navigator and Communicator were the programs offered, and I'm pretty sure you had to know some information about your server which you inserted into the program during the installation process to make it work. I'm enough of a packrat that I still have one of the installtion disks for Padific Bell. Thunderbird at some point became the modern incarnation of Netscape Communicator and at some point set it up in a way where it would automatically find the right server settings as part of the setup process. In playing around with this I found that you could completely delete an e-mail profile and could then reinstall it. It would install on the server correctly, You would have to reestablish the password for e-mails, but it would be the same password that AT&T already had. The thing is, if you delete the profile and reinstall it all the e-mails and the like you had on that profile will disappear. I did that once, but not before saving all the e-mail folders on a flash drive so I could put it back afterward. I have two computers here and they both have Thunderbird installed on them. One is primarily a backup, and I found that I can copy all the files in the profile on one to the profile on the other and it would copy everything,so that it would be an exact duplicate. In the process of playing around, I can tell you that if you go into windows Explorer, the file that contains the passwords is: signons.sqlite, which I identified via trial and error. If you delete that file, the program will need to recreate it and you will need to type in the passwords. That is another way of getting rid of a bad password so you can redo it.

Anyway, there is obviously more than one way to get the problem solved, but it looks like the average user can do it without any help from AT&T.