Thunderbird Community Forum

I am sure when I first began to use Thunderbird, I could see draft emails or sent emails but that feature seems to have disappeared .

Recently I have drafted an email, added an attachment then checked to ensure the correct attachment has been selected then my email has vanished and so needs to be redrafted. Does the step of checking the attachment cause the document to be deleted?

Your advice would be appreciated.

Regards, Kel

Love Tbird for years. Never a problem with Tbird on desktop, but sending email from my laptop has always been sketchy with Charter/Spectrum; I've fiddled with switching SMTP ports to allow sending from laptop and often succeeded (using suggestions from web: ports 587, default 465, and a few others). However, if I managed to send from laptop while at home, when I'd leave town and attempt to send email I'd receive Spectrum's hated message: "An error occurred while sending...charter.net...cmsmtp...blocked". Now I'm unable to find a port on my laptop that the SMTP server won't block. My suspicion is that the problem is caused by the simultaneous installations of Tbird on the laptop and desktop and the SMTP server won't accept mail sent from both when using the same ports. I was able to send a test email from my laptop while my desktop was being updated (and offline, obviously), but as soon as the desktop was updated I was no longer able to send from my laptop again (blocked SMTP server message).

Thanks in advance to any users who have some good suggestions.

My Inbox showed no messages the last time I started Thunderbird (until Thunderbird started to download new messages). I looked on the C: drive under Profiles, and the Inbox showed 0 KB, when a backup from 10/17/2021, was 1.67 GB (1,753,217 KB). I am not sure how this happened. I think there were Thunderbird updates for a couple of days before I noticed the problem. I had been having trouble with Windows 10 updates, and saved files on an external hard drive on 4/20/25 to back them up, but by then, the Inbox file in my Thunderbird profile showed 0 KB. I am using POP to download emails. Is there any way I can get my emails back? Are they saved somewhere else? Thank you in advance for your help!

When I receive an e-mail that has a JPEG attachment (Windows 10 Professional 64-bit), Thunderbird opens the JPEG image with Microsoft Photo Viewer. When the image opens, I cannot rotate the image. If I save the image and then open that saved image via the same Microsoft application, the rotate icon in the upper left is operative. Is this due to the permissions in the image being opened by Thunderbird from alt/local/temp? Thanks.

sending of this message failed The message could not be sent because connecting to Outgoing server SMTP failed. This server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. Please verify that your Out going server settings are correct and try again

I have deleted the two accounts and added them back, restarted thunderbird but still be the same message. I'm sure this has happened since i updated the thunderbird version

The latest Thunderbird releases have been crashing regularly, with these submitted reports. I'm trying to ascertain what I need to do to mitigate or eliminate the crashes.

bp-fff7f0cc-3bcf-4863-a97a-2da0b0241109 (submitted 5 minutes ago) bp-211988fe-edbc-4bd6-9f0b-22b8a0241109 (submitted 21 minutes ago) bp-e1d549ea-2933-4ed2-8bac-6c2ed0241108 (submitted 1 day ago) bp-0ec18bc9-e38b-4252-85e7-0cb5e0241108 (submitted 1 day ago) bp-44316ba1-928c-49e8-b7f0-3ac140241105 04-Nov-24, 7:22 PM bp-62666d35-b069-44c2-ab2c-3b6950241105 04-Nov-24, 7:22 PM bp-0631d697-4a78-482a-b0df-db8810241105 04-Nov-24, 7:22 PM bp-6d6b5962-f140-4532-b272-1f9bf0241105 04-Nov-24, 7:22 PM

etc, ad nauseum going back to 03 October.

My profile has multiple folders for each of my 6 mail accounts. E.g. for gmail: the ImapMail folder contains imap.gmail.com, imap.gmail-1.com, imap.gmail-2.com, imap.gmail-3.com, & imap.gmail-4.com. These folders are not the same & even have different years on the content file dates. Some contain only a few INBOX files, while others have hundreds of sequential INBOX-* files. Similarly, each of my other accounts have this same situation. Are these from multiple installations over the years? Is there a way to clean this up or to combine them into just 1 file without losing messages? I suspect I'm not really seeing any of the lower numbered ones, but only the most recent.

I recently had to re-install Windows again, because of microsoft updates messing up my PC. As always, I have to repeat the process of adding my emails to Thunderbird. I was able to add my gmail without too much trouble. However, I am unable to add my hotmails because the link Thunderbird is providing is incorrect. The login for my hotmail comes up, but when I click to add my password for the email, it gives me the following message. "You can't sign in here with a personal account. Use your work or school account instead." I have always had ONLY a personal account. I don't even know what a work/ school account is! I have never had this problem before. What the heck is going on here? Please fix these login links, so I can add my hotmails asap. Cheers!

how do i find my gmail imap password on the imap server?

get this message when I respond to request for login to general@vre.net

400. That’s an error.

The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That’s all we know

I wondered whether someone could advise please? I have a new laptop and want to transfer my email accounts from the old laptop to the new one. I have been following the AskLeo YT video on moving accounts to a new computer. I have copied the Profiles folder and profiles.ini (both zipped beforehand) from the old laptop to the new one. I downloaded Thunderbird to the new laptop, then deleted the supplied Profiles folder and profiles.ini and extracted the transferred zips. When I then start Thunderbird on the new laptop I have my standard inbox with Drafts, Sent, Junk, spam, Deleted and Saved, which is all as you'd expect. But I also have another account appearing as INBOX-1 which also has a Sent folder. Any emails transferred from the old computer are present in both Inboxes. Can I removed the second inbox, INBOX-1, without affecting my genuine inbox? Thanks.

When I open Thunderbird Mail on my laptop the settings for updates is set to automatically update. I have to change it every time I start it up as it won't stay on check for updates but let me update! What is the problem?

Best regards, Vin

I am considering moving over and using thunderbird as a desktop email client principaly to archieve my emails per the advice in the book. The book advices from a privacy and sercuity perspective that a email clinet such as thunderbrid should only be used to archive emails and not to send them. I dont think this is a big risk and I am considering using thinderbird to send emails as well, not just from a browser.

Are you able to clarify and provide further insight on this ? What are the privacy and security risks of sending an email this way ? Please see extracts from book below.

I do not recommend using them for daily access to these services, or to send email messages, but only as an archiving solution to make sure you always have a copy of your data offline.

I use this only as an offline backup of all email in the event I cannot access my Proton Mail account online. I never send email from this application.

A decade ago, my main concern about email privacy would have been exposure of a true IP address. Most of us still used email clients which shared the local IP address within the email headers of every sent message. he risk today is minimal. If you send an email from within a web browser through a service such as Proton Mail, Tuta, Fastmail, Gmail, etc., the recipient should only see the IP address of the email server. Your true home IP address should not be exposed. If you send an email from an email client while using these services, you are also usually protected. The emails bounce through the service provider's servers before going out and only includes those addresses. However, sending email through a client configured for corporate email may expose your true IP address. As an example, sending an email from your employer's provided address through a traditional emailclient from home could expose these sensitive details.

Hi,

I use Thunderbird's Message Filters to sort my incoming mail. I have about 31 filters, some of which are long ("Delete Junk" and "Advertisements" are two, which OR many domains and send mail directly to trash or a specific "Adverts" folder). I also use several Linux computers and run Thunderbird on each computer for connecting to my GMail account (IMAP). I like to synchronize my filters between my Linux hosts. I've been pointed to the file for copying filters between hosts: HOME/.thunderbird/MyProfile/ImapMail/imap.googlemail.com/msgFilterRules.dat

Copying that file between hosts (or using it as a backup after SNAP damaged my profile again) only partially works. The filter name, action, etc copies alright, but when triggered, the filter fails as the "folder" does not exist. Of course, the folder still exists and has for a long time. The following is a log entry from such a failing for a "magazine" entry for "Aeon".

[4/25/25, 12:35:15 GMT-4] Applied filter "Aeon magazine" to message from Aeon Weekly <support@aeon.co> - This week: Why AI science will be incomprehensible at 4/25/25, 12:34:22 GMT-4 moved message id = 89c6e02ebaf75bbc918731474.c3e7d573b0.20250425163412.c7ad5cda2b.7a1e170f@mail220.suw16.rsgsv.net to imap://mdalphin%40gmail.com@imap.gmail.com/Maillists/Aeon

[4/25/25, 12:35:20 GMT-4] Filter action failed: "Move failed" with error code=0x80550009 while attempting: Applied filter "Aeon magazine" to message from Aeon Weekly <support@aeon.co> - This week: Why AI science will be incomprehensible at 4/25/25, 12:34:22 GMT-4 moved message id = 89c6e02ebaf75bbc918731474.c3e7d573b0.20250425163412.c7ad5cda2b.7a1e170f@mail220.suw16.rsgsv.net to imap://mdalphin%40gmail.com@imap.gmail.com/Maillists/Aeon

The entry in msgFilterRules.dat reads as follows after the failure: name="Aeon magazine" enabled="no" type="17" action="Move to folder" actionValue="imap://mdalphin%40gmail.com@imap.gmail.com/Maillists/Aeon" condition="AND (from,ends with,aeon.co)"

A "diff" from a saved version of the file that worked shows that it is identical except for "enabled".

This failure happens to 100% of my filters - the "actionValue" is not recognized as I move the file between hosts or different profiles. I need to re-select the desired folder in the drop-down list of "Move to:" in the "Edit Filter" dialog.

Any idea on what is going wrong? It is as if there is some cache of recognized Imap folders that have unique IDs on a per host basis. Is there anyway I could make this copying work better without need to restore each of the 31 folders every time I make a copy?

Thanks, Mark

I tried to connect to an existing Google-Mail account via 'new', 'existing mail account' etc.. Finally a Google-Login-Window appears. After inserting the username Google responses with a message, that my browser does not support javascript. However, both in thunderbird and in firefox javascript is enabled.

Sincerely Yours Stefan Holzreiter

T-Bird account hacked. Changed password. Everything appears normal except ALL new inbound emails automatically end up in Trash folder (as unread). Can open, move them to inbox, etc., no problem. Can this be fixed? Is it a settings issues (which I can seem to find)? Thank you Greg.

Hi,

I'm on a fresh Windows and the CPU usage is waaaaay too big. When TB is out of focus, it uses about 10% of my CPU. This can go up to 15% when the window is active. It's not doing anything, not downloading or compacting or anything.

Thanks !

I can receive messages but when I try and send, I get this messaage:

"Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because connecting to Outgoing server (SMTP) failed. The server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. Please verify that your Outgoing server (SMTP) settings are correct and try again."

I checked the settings and nothing has changed that I can see. I used the standard template for setting up Thunderbird on Gmail and It just suddenly stopped working. When I go directly to gamil there is no problem with sending or receiving a test message to myself. I tried running a virus check with McAfee and it couldn't find anything to fix. I tried restarting the router the fiber cable is hooked to and it worked for a day or less and now back to the same issue. I don't know how to flush that router.

I recently spent some time in Australia where the time is 10 hours ahead of the UK. When I returned home I set the PC timezone back to UK and all appears well. Messages in my inbox and sent items have the correct timestamp. However, if I forward an email from my inbox that has a timestamp of 18 April 16:26, the embedded header appears like this:

Subject: WokinghamMay Fayre - Booking Confirmation Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 01:26:33 +1000 From: Alan Rouse <mayfayre@wokinghamlions.org.uk> To: spike.phillips@kingschurch.org.uk

This implies that it thinks the time zone is Australia, namely UK + 10 hours (UK time is UTC + 1:00). I have checked Thunderbird settings and they appear correct, saying the Date and Time Formatting is Regional settings locale: English (United Kingdom) and Date Text Format is Use system timezone