Thunderbird Community Forum

A disaster happened, but first, let me say that I had to create a new Thunderbird Profile because Thunderbird was acting really strange and also making my e-mails fail DKIM for some reason. After creating the new profile, things were working better, but still some problems. It's been several days. Twice it marked my own e-mails as Junk, and both times I marked them as Not Junk, but that didn't seem to "take".

An e-mail in my Drafts folder is my "in case of death" e-mail. I was editing it to change the To addresses, then told it to save as Draft. That immediate Draft went straight to the Junk folder. WTF? So I go to the Junk folder, select it, right click, and "Mark as Not Junk".

Instead of going to the Drafts folder, Thunderbird sent it. Not only that, the old Draft of the e-mail was sent also!

I'm royally pissed off! How could Thunderbird do something so stupid? First classify my own saved Draft as Junk after my having marked my own e-mails twice before as Not Junk, then send it when I said it was not Junk? This is stupid.

Needless to say, I had to hurriedly sent a retraction e-mail, then made phone calls.

Something is really wrong with Thunderbird Junk processing. After creating the new profile, I've seen junk e-mails sit in my Inbox for 15 minutes before suddenly Thunderbird decides that they are junk.

Thunderbird WAS a good program, but after having to start over with a new Profile, setting up my e-mail addresses again, install add-ins, go through all the settings again, import my e-mails, addresses, and calendars, then have things still going wrong, I'm wondering why I'm still using Thunderbird.

Most of the questions I have are either not answered at all or not answered in help or in forums and I'm unaware of any responses to questions I've asked. Isn't there any way to get support from a live person? My questions are often quite complicated. When I ask a question, I get dozens of answers that have nothing at all to do with my question and I don't have time to look thru all the answers. When I do see an answer that might be relevant, it either isn't or the answer is far too technical.

For example, I have no sent folder. Cant understand answers that tell how to create one. Need to be able to save my sent messages. Having to cc myself to get a copy of a sent message - stupid situation.

I am switching from Outlook to Thunderbird because of complicated problem with Outlook. Got garbage when imported csv contact file and can't find how to delete a large number of contacts. Reluctant to use your specific Outlook import in case it brings the Outlook problems along.

Really need help with lots of things making the transition. 'bold text'

Is there an extension or add-on that can search like the old Eudora does? The default search does not seem to search thru headers or all email messages This is important for us when we need to find the Senders IP numbers so we can ban the spam emails

Hello I am setting up a new Windows 10/11 Computer, with new virgin Thunderbird installation. My "old" TB mails on the "old" computer I would like to migrate to my new "Local Folder" and keep it for future reference (archived in read mode, but keep it accessible with the search function). How, and what do I have to move with the window explorer to the new W10/11 computer. I was reading up a lot but I am rather confused now. Thanks for helping

My email provider calls its junk folder "Spam". Many years ago I had to set up accounts tied to this provider (IONOS) to have a Spam folder. Otherwise, account would not imap correctly to the mail server. Today I noticed that my Spam folder is not there. When I try to create a new folder, TB won't allow me to create one with the exact name "Spam," as if the folder were already there. What is going on?

I have imported my GoDaddy Emails into Thunderbird. I am able to receive emails but I am not able to send anout emails so I believer my outgoing settings must be incorrect. Can someone help me. Thanks / J

I've installed Thunderbird on new computer, and moved over from the old computer emails and Address Books (including customized ones). But when I start a new message, I can't get any e-addresses to appear in the To box.

What do I need to do to access Addresses?

My c: disk is getting full, so I decided to transfer my Thunderbird profile to d: . My old Tbird profile has profile folders for two POP accounts and two IMAP accounts. I managed to copy the profile and set up new accounts and now emails work, but in the process I disconnected the old profile on c: . When trying to create a new account on c: (so that I can access the old profile to delete old mails and get more space) I run into either "incoming server already exists" or I am asked a password which I can't find.

Any help would be highly appreciated! Should I just delete the old profile, or is there a procedure to safely remove it? Or is a Tbird reinstall in order? Thanks!

My Spectrum password was changed and now I cannot get direct access to TB. For some reason TB is not linking up with Spectrum password. I get a popup panel saying "Login to server Mail.TWC.Com with username jomar159@hvc.rr.com failed" Retry Enter New password Cancel I have 2 accounts on TB 1 is wmarks1 and the other is jomar159@hvc.rr.com HELP

I have over 17,000 emails in my inbox and Thunderbird won't let me send any more out. I tried to cull blocks of emails (e.g., all before 2024) but it wouldn't let me do that; it made me do one at a time.

Is there no way I can delete a whole lot in one go? SW

I am looking to archive old folders from mail addresses that I don't use anymore, but don't want to delete the folders. And once those are gone- I would like the rearrange the order of the folders. This second one seems like it should be easy but I am having trouble finding how to do that. Thank you

Hello- I have the drafts being saved locally to a draft account but in the last week, drafts are disappearing rather than being saved. I did change severs over the summer and have had a slew of issues since then, but this is a new issue as of this week. I have multiple email accounts and this is happening on all of them. I am on a mac 140.3.1esr (aarch64). Thanks for any help- this is a debilitating issue.

Hi, Thunderbird : Under Windows 10 and Ubuntu, I have a vertical taskbar on the left. but once installed under Widows 11 no taskbar and no way to make it appear. Do you know a solution? Thank you

I noticed that I can't see the end of any longer email messages and realized that the Status bar is missing in the email window, too. Changing the relevant setting in the menu didn't do anything. The Status bar is visible in other tabs. When I hid the Today Pane (Events & Tasks), the status bar came back. When I displayed it, Status bar disappeared again. With longer email messages, it is impossible to view the complete message, because the message window seems to extend below the screen bottom. Hiding Windows task bar doesn't help.

Help, how can I have my status bar and read the messages without opening them in a new window, without having to hide the Today pane?

I have an MS email account which is passwordless and only uses fingerprint/passkey authentication.

How do I get TB to use this security method to gain access to my email? Currently, every time I try to add the email address/account, it asks for a password, which obviously I don't have.

adelphiaUK (Chris)

Please excuse misspellings and anything that may not make sense or cause offence as the medication I take can have an adverse effect on my mind.

I'm on Windows 11, I've archived my gmails to a 3GB zip and extracted it to a local MBOX file. I want to sue Thunderbird only to be able to conveniently see these emails. I don't want any accounts, nor to connect Thunderbird to the internet - I juust want to see the gmails.

I've installed Thunderbird, and the import/export Tools NG add-on. It won't let me import to a unified folder, so I deleted the unified folder. I have no "local folders", so I can't right click on one and select import. I can't see how to make one either, and the help is of no help.

I wonder if somebody could tell me, without assuming knowledge I don't have, how to do this please.

Thanks Chris

My cat laid too close to my keyboard (i.e., by the control, shift, and windows button) and I am now unable to send messages from any of my email address in Thunderbird. I've checked the server settings and they all appear to be correct, but I keep getting the error message that connecting to the smtp failed. I'm receiving emails, but can't send them. Is there anything else that I might be missing apart from checking the server settings.

Hi I am using thunderbird with the integrated events connected to various google domains. My calendar looks synchronized and notifications show up. I am on popos on a laptop. The thing is that a lot of time the notifications show up late; like not hours late, but let's say 5 minutes late and sometimes they don't re-appear after the initial reminder. So it's not 100% sure that you will get reminded or pinged at the right time. I have not figured out any specific rule when it works and when it won't. Curious if anyone else is running into such problems. Thanks Andreas

Dear Thunderbird Team,

I am writing to report a critical issue with the Thunderbird Extension API where it returns stale, cached data instead of live folder contents for Gmail IMAP accounts.

Issue Description The browser.messages.list() and browser.messages.query() APIs are returning outdated message data from 2016-2021, completely ignoring the actual current contents of my Gmail IMAP inbox. While Thunderbird's UI displays current emails correctly, the extension API serves permanently cached old data.

Evidence of the Bug What Thunderbird UI Shows: Current inbox with emails from today and recent weeks

Real-time folder contents

Proper folder synchronization

What Extension API Returns: Only 100 messages total (artificial limit)

Messages exclusively from 2016-2021

No emails from 2022-2025 present

Completely ignores current folder contents

Technical Details: Profile: /Volumes/Data/Mail Files/Thunderbird/Profiles/aq8q4la7.default-release/

Account: Gmail IMAP (imap.googlemail.com)

Folder: account1://INBOX

API Used: browser.messages.list(folderId) and browser.messages.query()

Steps to Reproduce Set up Gmail IMAP account in Thunderbird

Write extension using browser.messages.list() API

Compare API results with actual folder contents

Observe API returns stale cached data from years ago

Debugging Attempted We have tried:

Deleting all .msf index files

Clearing folderCache.json and global-messages-db.sqlite

Removing cache folders (cache/, cache2/, startupCache/)

Rebuilding folder indexes

Using different API methods (messages.query vs messages.list)

None of these resolved the issue - the API continues to return the same stale dataset.

Impact This completely breaks any extension that needs to access current folder contents, such as email tracking, automation, or filtering extensions.

Request Please investigate why the Extension API serves different (and outdated) data compared to Thunderbird's main UI, and fix the API to return actual live folder contents.

Thank you for your attention to this critical issue.

Best regards, Hasan