Thunderbird Community Forum

Subject: Persistent Column and Folder Layout Issues — Not Being Saved Between Sessions

This is a follow-up to my previous support requests regarding two ongoing problems that significantly impact daily usability.

Column Settings I manage multiple accounts, and my preferred column layout is: Starred, Read Status, Attachment, Subject, From, and Date/Time. I do not use Threads, Correspondents, or Spam Status columns. Despite setting these preferences repeatedly, Thunderbird fails to retain them. Every day I must spend time reconfiguring columns across some or all of my accounts — the state varies unpredictably from one session to the next. This is a persistent, daily frustration that costs meaningful time. Most other major email clients save and reliably maintain column preferences. I'd expect Thunderbird to do the same.

Folder Panel Layout Two problems occur regularly when Thunderbird loads:

Folder order — Standard system folders (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, All Mail, Trash, Spam) should appear at the top of each account. Instead, Sent, All Mail, Trash, and/or Spam are frequently scattered among custom folders, with no apparent consistency.

Folder expansion — Most or all folders load in an expanded state, exposing every nested sub-folder regardless of whether they contain unread mail. This creates unnecessary visual clutter and requires manual collapsing each session.

Again, this behavior is uncommon in other widely-used email clients. Summary These are not one-time glitches — they recur daily and represent a significant usability gap. I'd appreciate confirmation that these are known issues being tracked, or guidance on a reliable fix. Reformatting the interface every morning is not a reasonable expectation for users.

Thunderbird version: 153.0.3 (64-bit), Meadow, release channel, fully up to date.

I can successfully insert my local PNG into a composed HTML email, tick “Attach this image to the message,” and add a hyperlink to the image. The hyperlink works when the email is sent.

The problem occurs when trying to use this permanently as the account signature. HTML signatures I've tried either lose the image, show a broken-image icon, or fail to preserve the clickable image when used automatically.

I have also tested an HTML signature using a local file:///C:/... image reference, which produces a broken-image icon in Thunderbird.

I do not want to host the image remotely. I want the PNG embedded in the HTML/signature and sent with each email.

Can you confirm the correct method specifically for Thunderbird 153.0.3 on Windows, and whether there is a current issue with embedded/Base64 images or clickable image signatures in this version?

I have been trying to archive my 25 years of Yahoo mail before they delete most of it. I thought I had it done. Now I have had to start again. Did you know that setting Thunderbird to ISAM download all your emails will only get the first 10,000 of any folder with more than that in it? Yes indeed, so it seems. We have to set the yahoo download server to the 'export' server. prefix the existing name with 'export'.

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I am locked out of my yahoo accounts now. And the attempts I made earlier to delete stuff to make room have deleted stuff that never got downloaded/archived because from a folder with more than 10,000. That's how it goes. Just thought I'd warn anyone who might be as unknowing as I was. I took advice to the contrary and believed it.

I updated t the latest version of Thunderbird but since then none of my email addresses were changed with the update. Tried all the advice on line but still can't retrieve my saved email addresses from the inbox and sent box

Attached is a picture of what my account settings looks like. Thunderbird stopped syncing my emails from a gmail account. How do I get it to continue syncing my emails?

Cannot send or receive email all of sudden in Thunderbird. When I the click the messages icon, nothing happens, and I get "Could not connect to server mail.twc.com; the connection was refused". When trying to send a m,message I get "Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because connecting to Outgoing server (SMTP) mail.twc.com failed. The server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. Please verify that your Outgoing server (SMTP) settings are correct and try again." No settings were changed and everything was fine when I put the computer to sleep. This happens on both a Win 7 and 11 machine Email is a Time Warner (now Spectrum) Road Runner account (twc.com). Spent an hour with Spectrum, and they say this is a third party (Thunderbird) issue. A friend has the same setup, and is having the same problems that started at the same time. Win 11 version 150.02 Win 7 115.18.0 (latest available for win 7)

Appreciate any help....

After system complete reinstallation Ubuntu 24.04 it is not possible to send mails with SMTP Server. Receiving messages is possible!! Two fault Messages happen, I've two SMTP servers: 1. No connection to SMTP possible 2. Server timeout

And yes, I've checked nearly everything what's to find in the internet, reinstallation, change and check settings and passwords, together with the specialist from my provider. Also my provider is not able to find a mistake. As I've found out in the net, there are sometimes problems to connect to SMTP, but no solution found. Is there some security in the UBUNTU system, which blocks the SMTP connection or is this a bug from Thunderbird? Thanks in advance Andreas

I recently (unwisely) refreshed my WIndows 10. On restarting I had to reinstal Thunderbird. I thought I'd be able to recover all my old emails by importing the old profile from Windows.old, but I've had some problems: 1) I can't identify which profile was the most recent. 2) The info from each profile has remained on my Thunderbird, although I though it would be overwritten by the next profile I imported. 3) I've tried importing them one by one, but none of the old profiles is the one I was looking for, with all my sub folders. I need the old emails for work, invoicing and tax calculation purposes. I've now been sitting in front of my computer for a couple of days in a cold sweat, the desperation building quietly. Can anybody help?

We are facing issues with Thunderbird mail application.

Incoming emails are not being received in Thunderbird. Thunderbird is running very slowly and frequently becomes unresponsive. Sending and receiving emails is taking a long time. We have already restarted the application and system, but the issue still persists.

Kindly check the mail server settings and Thunderbird configuration from your end and advise on the necessary action to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

Your prompt support will be highly appreciated.

We're planning to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird, but we have a hard time in harmonizing font sizes on text and signature. One of the issues is that fonts can be set to textual values tiny, small, medium, etc. w/o knowing what it corresponds to in pt. But lets explain what we tried so far: - Under Settings/ General / Language&Fonts, we defined Calibri 12 as default, what we repeated under Advanced for 'Latin' & 'Other Writing Fonts' - Under Settings / Composition, we defined Calibri / Medium for the HTML Style - The HTML-signature is defined using the Calibri 12 font But when creating a new message w/ these settings, the result is terrible as you can see in the example: disregard the fonts' color, just look at the font sizes.

Is there any simple solution?

Every time I start Thunderbird it takes several minutes and sometimes doesn't start up. Once it does open up, emails do update new ones but if I go to account settings and select anything it hangs up. If I click on it, grays out and gets a message Thunderbird not responding. I have to open task manager to stop the program. Why aren't the emails on my email server get deleted/ moved updated when using Thunderbird? It seems like the only thing that happens only gets changed on the device I made changes to only. (computer, or phone or laptop)

all of a sudden, my deleted emails are not going into my Trash file. They are not spam. They are just emails I've already read.

Again, all of a sudden I have a Spam folder which I do not need or want. I want my Trash folder back and I want to be able delete my emails into that folder.

Right now, and this is new, when I delete an email it completely disappears.