Thunderbird Community Forum

I am having a problem with receiving emails that are someone replying to an email I sent. I don't hear back from them and when I give them a call to see why they haven't responded they say, yes they have. So I go and type their name in the search bar at the very top and it shows me their responses and says that the email is in my inbox but it isn't! How do I figure out where these emails actually are and how can I get it to stop doing this?

Following a switch off and restart triggered I think by a Windows update, Thunderbird is not displaying any messages in my Inbox, though it is showing the number of messages in the Inbox title bar. 'Drafts' and 'Sent' all display correctly, but the 'Inbox' is blank with a grey icon of an envelope and the statement: "No message found". I am an IT novice. I looked on the 'help' pages. I have checked that no filters are set. I have right-clicked on the 'Inbox' title to display the menu with 'properties' at the bottom. I have clicked on that to bring up the dialog box with the "Repair" icon. It shows 'Inbox' in the 'Name' box but I note that the 'Location' box is blank. Presumably it should not be. Presumably it should show either the location of locally stored messages on my hard drive, or the location of the messages on the email server. I am not sure which. I have found the directory on my hard drive where I believe the messages are stored locally. The size of the file suggests to me that they are all there. The periodic 'Checking for new messages' is happening, but nothing is displaying, though a check via webmail shows that new messages are arriving on the server. What should I do to get my Inbox to display correctly? With many thanks, Iain

I have seen many questions a bit like mine but they all refer to downloading emails. Mine is different: "The folder 'Trash on my@email.com' could not be compacted because writing to folder failed. Verify that you have enough disk space, and that you have write privileges to the file system, then try again." It now happens on two different email addresses (one is POP one is IMAP). Trash seems otherwise to work and can be deleted. But still this alarm. MAS OS 15.1.1 (24B91) - latest Thunderbird 128.5.2esr (64-bit)

I'm working in Windows 11 on my PC and can't find the menu tab to change layout of my email. The only instructions I see were posted ibn 2017. Why is this so difficult?

Bonjour, J'ai effacé par erreur un dossier et ses sous-dossiers directement dans ma messagerie Orange. J'ai ensuite installé Thunderbird qui voit ces dossiers dans la poubelle mais ils restent désespérément vides des mails qu'ils contenaient. Est-il possible de les récupérer malgré tout svp ?

I am now getting a spinning wheel with annoying frequency while using/trying to use Thunderbird on my MacBook Air 2017 running Monterey. Everything was fine for the first 6-9 months, but over recent months the spinning wheel has appeared more and more frequently while I'm trying to read mail, answer mail, scroll through messages, etc., etc. Now it comes up every few minutes and delays me doing anything for about 15-30 seconds at a time. It's really frustrating. I recently ran Onyx, which was designed to clear cache, etc and make everything run smoothly. But the only program it required me to quit before it started was Thunderbird. Is there some cache or something I need to clear on a (semi-) regular basis to keep it working at a reasonable speed without this godforsaken spinning wheel interrupting everything? Thanks for any/all your help.

Hello,

restoring email in thunderbird has stopped with mai 2024. How can this fixed?

please ask me for concrete support. Do no send me to the next address.

koffie

I would like to download hundreds of emails from Thunderbird to my PC for archiving purposes. How can I download one of my folders from local folders? I tried using AI but it didnt help me at all.

When I use my PC (main device) Thunderbird shows individual mail folders, on my iPad the default mail client as well as individual account folders has an 'All Inboxes' This is very useful as 95% of my mail will go to one account .... so having an 'All folders' account ensures I don't miss a mail arriving on a less used account.

Is there a way to set this up on Thunderbird?

Opened Thunderbird today April 7, 2025 and the oldest email was from 2:58 PM April 6 2025. All my extensive collection of folders and old email have disappeared. New messages arrive in my inbox just fine. I suspect that there is a folder still on my hard drive somewhere with all the info in it. It appears that Thunderbird just can't find it for some reason. How can I help Thunderbird get back to using that file?

Just wondering why when I organize/delete my emails in TB (have several accounts in there) my profile size does not go down but always up? Should I be refreshing or something like that?

Copied Thunderbird Profile from Windows 10 PC, pasted to Windows 11 PC - No email history or address book

I followed the steps to copy the profile from the old PC and paste it into the folder on the old PC.

Thunderbird is using that profile, but there are no email history or address book.

When setting up Thunderbird, I did not see the radio tick box for removing mail from the server. What will happen now that I have removed about 10000 pieces of email from my local account on my computer's hard drive?

I have more questions, but would rather ask one at a time.

I have a new w11 laptop. I would like to install Thunderbird. I have 8 email accounts on the old W10 computer. I plan on keeping the old W10 computer running and using TB. All my accounts are IMAP--Yahoo, gmail, hotmail (now outlook) but I have an pretty extensive Local folder collection on the old W10 Would I be better off just installing TB on the new W11 computer and adding each email and start fresh or should I venture into copying the W10 profile (some of the instructions seem a bit confusing). If I add all my emails as a fresh start to the new W11 computer could I then just copy the LOCAL folders in the W10 Profile and paste it into the W11 profile?

All the messages in my Inbox disappeared this morning. I have a MacBook Air running Sonoma 14.7.2, my ISP is Gandi, and Thunderbird 115.4.1 is my email. I had clicked on a link in an email from a known source and when I returned to email, all the inbox messages were gone. All other folders (Sent, Drafts, etc) are there and current. My husband and I each have email accounts; his Inbox is all there too. The Inbox emails were not in the Trash, Deleted or Junk folders. I closed Thunderbird and reopened; messages still gone. I closed all apps, shut down the computer and restarted; opened Thunderbird, messages still gone. When I look at the Profile files, I can't tell which one would be my Inbox, but none of the likely candidates seems big enough to hold the, um, 7000+ messages that were there. I have spent the day internet-searching and reading various posts on disappearing messages - most of which are very old and/or for Windows - but I am unable to figure out what to do. Are the messages somewhere in the Profile? Are they on my ISP's server? How can I get them back into the Inbox? Thanks for any help.

I am trying to change my Thunderbird password which I have forgotten but the settings page needs it to reveal saved passwords, which is a catch 22. Do I need to remove it in order to replace it with something that I can remember or is there another way to fix this?

In Windows 11, the Address Book is accessed via an icon on top left of the TB main page or Alt+2. In Windows 11 is there a similar key combination to view the folders below Local Folders?

Hello, Sometime ago something happened on my server and caused the email account to get corrupted. I cannot access any of the emails. Prior to this, a backup was made of the account. The backup was made because the server was being changed. All emails worked perfectly after the server change and worked for months. The account is set up as IMAP. The size roughly of the backup is 1.2 GB. The backup file does NOT have the proper extension for recovering the emails. The extension is simply .file

When the email got corrupted it simply dissapeared from the server. I think the server is running Linux / Apache.

Any suggestions? Thanks