Thunderbird Community Forum

Hello everyone

I recently upgraded from TB 69 to the latest TB (after a crucial add-on finally got updated), and I'm generally happy with it, except for one little irk:

In Classic layout, the preview pane now contain multiple messages. As far as I can tell, it contains all messages of the selected thread, in date order (not in message list order). I would prefer the preview pane to contain just ONE message, namely the currently selected message. It is annoying to have to click repeatedly inside the preview pane to access the individual messages in the preview pane. It is also visually confusing (to me).

What's worse, the messages in the preview pane do not follow the normal threading: they appear to be shown in order of date, not in the order of the messages in the message list.

In the screenshot, you can see the thread has 11 messages, and in the message list there are three subthreads. The preview pane also shows the 11 messages, but not in the same order as in the message list. Plus, in order for me to read any messages, I need to click inside the preview pane to fold each message in or out.

I prefer a situation where I can click a single message in the message list, and a single message is shown in the preview pane. Is this possible with the latest TB?

Thanks.

Hi my Thunderbird email says it was at 95% full so I tried to set it to automatically delete emails older than a certain date, or a certain amount. I tried both options under account settings both delete all emails over 50,000 and tried delete emails older then 1000 days. Thunderbird is still loading emails well past both the number and the amount of days ago. In addition before it said I had roughly a little over 100k emails, and now it says downloading message header 1 of 431,000 at the bottom. The only other thing I did was click an option that popped up saying it fixed most problems with emails not loading properly by fixing the folder or something like that. I cannot find the option again however anywhere. In addition now that it is loading over 400k emails, it has emails at the top of the date saying from today at all different times which are 100% old emails so I have no idea what is going on or how to fix. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated as it is completely slowing down my computer and almost impossible to send an email while downloading. Thanks so much!

I have used Thunderbird for years (now on 128.5.2esr (64-bit) for Mac). I have a very large number of folders, and I would like to have a default setting for columns in new folders I create. I am aware that you can change the column setting in the folder by clicking the "Select columns to display" button and selecting the ones you want, and that you can change the setting for all folders in an account by going to the "Apply columns to..." > "Folder and its children..." > select the account > select the account name at the top of the list. But I would rather not have to do that every time I create a new folder, but I can't find any other way to do it anywhere, including on another answer to a question in this forum, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1426413.

Then I found two settings in the Config Editor... that seem like they might be where this can be done:

• mailnews.database.global.views.conversation.columns, whose settings in my case are:

{"selectCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"1"}, "threadCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":"3"}, "flaggedCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":"5"}, "attachmentCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"7"}, "subjectCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":"15"}, "unreadButtonColHeader":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"9"}, "senderCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"17"}, "recipientCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"19"}, "correspondentCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":"21"}, "junkStatusCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"11"}, "receivedCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"23"}, "dateCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":"25"}, "statusCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"27"}, "sizeCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"29"}, "tagsCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"31"}, "accountCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"33"}, "priorityCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"35"}, "unreadCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"37"}, "totalCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"39"}, "locationCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":"41"}, "idCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"43"}, "deleteCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"13"}, "xnoteCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"1"}}

and

• mailnews.database.global.views.global.columns, whose settings in my case are:

{"selectCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "threadCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":0}, "flaggedCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":0}, "attachmentCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "subjectCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":0}, "unreadButtonColHeader":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "senderCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":0}, "recipientCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":0}, "correspondentCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "junkStatusCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "dateCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":0}, "receivedCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "statusCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "sizeCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "tagsCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "accountCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "priorityCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "unreadCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "totalCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "locationCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":0}, "idCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}, "deleteCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":0}}

The first one matches the columns I see in a newly created folder better, having the "xnoteCol" entry, but my new folders also have several columns related to my CardBook extension at the bottom of the list. Moreover, the settings' arguments don't make sense in terms of what I see. For example, I see the Thread column, whose settings – ("threadCol":{"visible":true,"ordinal":"3"} – make sense since "visible" is set to "true", but I also see the Attachments column, whose settings – "attachmentCol":{"visible":false,"ordinal":"7"} – *don't* make sense because "visible" is set to "false". Similar no-sense settings occur in the second setting.

So there *is* a way to change the default column settings in Config Editor..., which makes a whole lot of sense, but the way the settings are set in these two settings, which apparently are not the ones that fully determine my default settings given the CardBook-related columns that I see, do *not* seem to make sense.

The "Folder and its children..." approach works, but it makes it harder than it should be, and it seems like there must be a way to change the defaults in Config Editor.... If there is, please tell me how.

Thanks for any help you can give...

tl;dr: How can I import Outlook 2013 messages into Thunderbird?

Background: I used Outlook Express until Microsoft killed it, and have used Outlook 2013 since. Now Microsoft has forced me to abandon that due to Oauth2 not being supported, so I am looking for a replacement.

Thunderbird seems to be a recommended solution, but despite poking around in the community forums and help files, I am not finding straightforward answers to my questions on the current platform. (Side note: I have been using Firefox since it was Phoenix and then Firebird, and then Firefox, but never really used Thunderbird.)

I found and attempted to follow the instructions for import here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-import but it must not work with older versions of Outlook, as I got a message saying "No profile found." (I ran it under the same user, an admin, that has the Outlook 2013 installed, so I don't know where it is looking for that profile). Import from a file doesn't give the option to use the Outlook file types.

So, given that, how can I import my email and address book from Outlook 2013?

Thanks in advance!

Is there a way to turn on a third line in the message list to see the "preview text" (35-40 characters) that appears in most modern email programs? This is so helpful in quickly deciding which emails to open among the hundreds that arrive in our inboxes these days. Many mass mailers include these "preview texts" to provide additional information about the content. Coming from Outlook and Apple Mail on PCs, tablets, and phones, I miss these. The third line in the entries in the Thunderbird message list is mysteriously blank. I looked for a checkbox in settings, but couldn't find one.

I can not use my contact group to send an email, just switched over to Windows 11 if that is the problem. The contact list comes up for single contacts but not a group. I don't know if the file got corrupted when I changed out the computer.

After almost three weeks of hacking I finally solved my [are not working] problem. (It was very difficult, including creating a new `https` setting and hand-editing the profile's `handlers.json` file.) So now I can finally open links in emails like I could in TB 102 before upgrading to 128. Since I have "Always ask" set, I get a dialog with a choice of which web browser to use. All good.

Problem is that the browser dialog pops up a minimum of once per hour whether TB is open (not minimized/iconified) or not. (I leave TB running at all times, often for months at a time.) This is annoying, particularly because the URLs are to internal TB infrastructure, usually but not always https://notifications.thunderbird.net/2.0/notifications.json.

What should I do with these JSON links? Many don't even have a filename in the URL, so I can't save them in my profile folder even if I wanted to. If TB wants them as updates shouldn't it know where/what to do with them, and do it? I suppose I could turn off "Always ask", which I don't want to do -- would TB handle the URLs correctly then? Or would it just open the link in the default browser and I'd be worse off than I am now? (I usually just "Cancel" the dialog and don't go to the URL.)

It would be even better if I could completely turn off all notifications, period. I always have "Check for new messages every ... minutes" turned off and manually check my POP/IMAP messages when I want to. I'll update TB when my Linux distro has a new version. In fact I've always noticed that TB runs continuously as a background process, adding a small percentage to a CPU core's usage. Is there any way to turn this off, too, so that TB is completely quiescent until un-mininized and "Get Messages" or "New Message", etc. is clicked?

Any help appreciated. I've used Thunderbird exclusively as my email client for over 20 years, and IMO these kinds of new features and the breakages they cause have made things continuously worse since the days when I used TB 68 and 78. BTW, I've tried all the above in 115 and 137 with the same problems.

Attempting to creat a QR code to set up thunderbird on mobile phone. I am ask to provide a PIN that I have no record of. The change PIN instructions "go to Settings > Sign-in options." I can-not find any such place. How can I locate or chang that KEY.

Thank you, kilheffer@startmail.com

Hi, in order to avoid problems with the view of emails, I repaired the folder of my emails configured as imap. During this process, all emails were reloaded from my provider. so far so good. But the dates of the emails now have all the time& date of today. Changing the sort order from date to received didn't change anything. By using CTRL-U I could see the correct dates: extract:

Received: from s011.cyon.net by s011.cyon.net with LMTP id 4BYfOpsNY2e97BUAuT68IQ (envelope-from ); Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:59:55 +0100 Return-path: <b-1_vdggxbatsqce3arlokbchgxsgi-kdiahz8hidhcbgmp4@eur.pb-dynmktge.com> Envelope-to: robert@leven.lu Delivery-date: Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:59:55 +0100

addons: Cardbook 97.7 Filelink provider for send vers. 2.1.1. OWL for exchange vers. 1.3.4. (beonex) Thunderbird conversations 4.2.3 Thanks in advance for your help. Kind regards, Robert Leven

I am using both Outlook Web App (OWA, weaning myself off it) and Thunderbird. If I reply to a message using Thunderbird, both Thunderbird and OWA recognize that the message has been answered and they both add an arrow icon to the message. However, if I reply to a message using OWA, Thunderbird does not recognize that the message has been answered. Is that normal? Shouldn't it see the \Answered flag on the IMAP server?

I'm using IMAP on an Exchange server, and this happens with Thunderbird Beta 138.0b4 and Daily 139.0a1 (2025-04-23) under Windows.

Thank you.

Seems like every week Mozilla does a update to Thunderbird. Every time becomes another problem. Look at all the HELP issues on this forum. There is a old saying " (KISS)KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID" First my "TRASH" disappeared and it now it goes into the "JUNK" file. Then the "JUNK" icon disappeared and when customized back to the top it no longer worked. I had done away with the password having to constantly being entered EVERY time I to tried to receive or send or even look at a existing email already received. And NOW the demanding a password is back with the last weekly update. Now I am constantly having to put in a password that I deleted from the "SAVED PASSWORD" and no NOT have the blocked checked in the "Use Primary Password".

I wish I could do a complete CLEAN REINSTALL OF THUNDERBIRD BUT EVERY TIME IT STILL SEEMS TO RECOVER THE PREVIOUS VERSION. Any help would be appreciated. <redacted>

I am running Windows 10 Home edition. My email account is for a domain I own on Dreamhost. When I click on a subfolder I get the message "Server imap.dreamhost.com has disconnected. The server may have gone down or there may be a network problem." I have my firewall set to allow thunderbird.exe traffic to pass. Any suggestions. I don't have this issue running K-9 on my Andriod phone. (I am reluctant to switch to Thunderbird on my Android phone until I solve this on my PC.

Any suggestions?

We installed Thunderbird on a brand new laptop and immediately noticed that mail was being received from our ISP, but we were unable to send mail. After contacting our provider, they tried everything to correct the situation but were unsuccessful. We'v resorted to using Webmail because everything we have tried with Thunderbird hasn't solved the problem.

Since a while my maila ddresses are no longer autocompleted. Browsing through this forum I ried different approaches but nothing helped. How did this happen and how can I get back to what I had? Thanks in advance, Silke

Hi - I keep getting the message: Login to account (my email address) failed Login to server imap.googlemail.com with username (my email address) failed.

Can you please help me fix this problem?

What setting do I need to change so that threading does not occur in any of my email folders? I hate this feature and wish to remove it permanently.

Thanks, Steve

1st I am 90 yrs old. Been using this app since it was created. Never a problem until these new updates.

Was trying to delete old file (like the old program (block and hit delete). Found some message about deleting Trash folder and things I did not and do not understand. I now have LOST all my data, emails, addresses, everything.

I tried deleting the program and downloading a new copy. Did not work.

App Will not let me create an account. It keeps searching forever and have to cancel. App can't find my google password and just locks up. I only have two gmail addresses. I can access them by going to gmail.com but all my folders are not there. I need HELP please.

I can't even update my address file at the gmail site as I have no access to anything from TB. I am a research genealogist and now have lost all my saved research information.

Patrecia Glau <edited>@gmail.com <phone redacted>

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)