Thunderbird Support Forum

Thunderbird keeps asking me to compact folders, c.f. the attached screenshot. Meanwhile, I also checked the profile files under AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles, the whole folder of the profile files has only 24.2 MB (25,477,204 bytes).

I have Thunderbird 91.8.1 (64-bit) installed on my macbook pro mid 2012. I am having issues with folder compacting. It takes a long time no matter how often I do it, and makes the whole computer unusable until it's finished.

I have 3 accounts, 2 pop accounts and 1 gmail account that I don't use. I have tried removing the gmail account, and get to the confirmation screen saying "removal successful" - I then close thunderbird, and reload - and the account is back again.

I did ask this question in August last year, and then got distracted with life -(sorry День сумо for your assistance at the time) Since then the problem is the same. I just ignore the compacting requests. One new change now is that Gmail is asking for a sign in everytime I open thunderbird. I go through the sign in, and then that works, but if I close TB, and reopen I am asked for log in details again. My authentication method is set to 0Auth2.

Thank you in advance for any help with this.

Kind regards Hugh

Just this week I started having problems where Thunderbird hangs, apparently due to a memory leak, after viewing S/MIME signed emails containng embedded hyperlinks to a secure site that requires my certificate to login. This is on a Dell Precision 7550 running Windows 10, and Thunderbird 91.9.0 (also the previous installed version - I believe it was 91.8.1).

After clicking on such an email (which come from a known address and are forwarded to a specific folder by a rule), the email is slow or fails to load into the display window. Subsequent clicking on other folders has a delayed response or never responds. I sometimes get a message at the top saying (Not Responding), sometimes I can click on other email records or switch folders, but emails no longer display contents in the viewing pane - it stays blank.

The other think I noticed is the blue bar at the lower right which appears when compacting shows up with the bar at 100% but never goes away. To end the task I must use Task Manager. This behavior only occurs after I have clicked on signed email with links (but not the link itself) that require a login using the smartcard certificates. Prior to looking at the signed email with these links, TB operates normally (aside from the endemic new user interface issues) when viewing other signed or unsigned emails. Curiously, in my most recent restart of the program, I clicked on several messages from the source of the emails with the hyperlinks, but ones that did not link to the secure files requiring certificate access. One of these was encrypted and opened normally with my certificate, and after accessing this email, the emails with the secure hyperlink opened normally and did not result in TB not responding.

I believe this has something to do with TB and S/MIME configuration, and have verified this behavior does not occur in Troubleshooting mode. However, in Troubleshooting mode, I cannot access my PKI S/MIME certificates as the Broadcom smart card device is not present. I am attaching a task manager snip showing the memory leak (the memory used continues to increase with time, the CPU percentage stays roughly the same - unfortunately this file upload has a perpetually spinning circle and still says it is uploading, so I may have to try again). I have also included the Device Manager view associated with the S/MIME certificates in regular and troubleshooting mode which show the internal Broadcom device is not present in the latter instance. I need to have the functionality and security provided by the smartcard S/MIME certificates, so this is a major problem for me.

Since latest update:

If I receive an Excel spreadsheet (either .xls or .xlsx) or a Word document (.docx) as an attachment in Thunderbird it will only open in Read Only mode. There is no way to give permission to open/view. I can save it & then open and it is fine but I cannot simply open the attachment directly without it being in Read only mode. I cannot uncheck the Properties "Read Only" check box because it is greyed out.

Similar problem applies to jpegs where you can't rotate the opened attachment (ie this opens in a kind of non-editing mode too)

The yellow security "Permission" bar that one clicked to "accept/view" is no longer appearing. (Sorry I don't know what to call this function or how to properly describe it)

Something seems to be preventing this yellow bar showing so I cannot click to "give permission to edit" or "accept the content" or whatever the appropriate permission/acceptance is

Is this a config issue ?

This problem does not occur if opening from webmail or Windows Live Mail, it applies only on Thunderbird.

Same issue on Windows 7 (yes I know it is not supported) and Windows 10. I have Thunderbird 91.9.0 (release update channel) on both (Two laptops).

I have several email accounts and the issue occurs with any email account and whether POP3 or IMAP. Also with Word/Excel/jpeg attachments to emails stored in Local Folders which used to open fine.

This problem has only arisen following latest update (91.9.0).

I have tried opening in Troubleshoot (Safe) Mode with add-ons disabled and the problem still exists.

Can anyone tell me what to do about this please ? How can I make Thunderbird allow direct opening of an attachment in normal editing mode as it used to do ? How do I get the yellow bar back please ?

What, if anything, do I change in config editor to make the yellow bar reappear ?

Would appreciate help please as this is giving me a major headache & upset

Thanks

Hello, all.

Ever since I upgraded Thunderbird to 91.9.0 (64-bit), it has been freezing consistently and repeatedly - upon startup, and every 30 minutes, it freezes for approximately 5 minutes and 40 seconds. Then it unfreezes and works fine. But then 24 minutes and 20 seconds later, it freezes once again, going "Not Responding" in Windows 10.

When it freezes, Thunderbird uses 12-16% of my CPU, and memory usage steadily climbs, going up 0.1-0.2Mb each second, and goes back down to normal on the unfreeze.

Now, what have I done? It still happens in Troubleshooting mode. It happens in Troubleshooting mode while Windows is in Safe Mode With Networking. Adding an exception in my antivirus (NOD32) did nothing, as did turning off Allow Windows Search Messages in Advanced. Turning off Check For New Messages in Account settings does nothing. Nothing consistent shows up in the Error Console either, but I'm not a coder, so don't really know what to look for.

Ideas?

Thanks.

When I accidentally delete an email, I used to be able to restore the innediately preceding email with Control Z. As of a few weeks ago, that no lomger works. Help, please!

I am using a university email system hosted by google, servers are imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com using university credentials, which involve 2-factor authentication using Duo. It has worked fine for several years, but last night we had a power failure that outlasted my UPS. When I started up Thunderbird this morning, I could not access the account, every attempt threw up a dialog from the University saying "Web Login Service - Stale Request". Clearing cookies and cache was not helpful. I deleted the account, shut down Thunderbird, restarted Thunderbird, and re-created the account. Now I can receive mail, but I still get the same error when I try to send mail. The account works through the gmail browser app, but I find that app to be worse than useless. I have no idea what to try next. Thanks for any help/suggestions.

I posted this last year and one other person chimed in with the same issues, but there were no responses, and the thread was archived. The other person suggested this problem had been around for a long time and he was using a different email system. I am reposting my observations below in the hope there may be a response or a fix.

I am running TBird 91.9 on a Win10 Pro 21H2 laptop and on a Win10 Pro 21H2 Surface GO. My issue is with my Compuserve/AOL email account which is my primary account. I send email on smtp.compuserve.com and receive on imap.aol.com. The issue is intermittent and usually multiple times per day when it occurs. When I am receiving email I get the message "Server imap.aol.com has disconnected. The server may have gone down or there may be a network problem." What does not make sense is that it may occur on one of my PCs and then I will check the other and it is fine. Or sometimes both give this message but then I can go to my iPhone which also receives from imap.aol.com and it has no problems.

The problem is most severe, almost always occurs when I ask to synch mailboxes to go offline. I ask TBird to download all messages before disconnecting and it successfully downloads all of my Compuserve mailboxes except the InBox and consistently gives the server off line warning.

Are there some TBird settings I can adjust to try to resolve this problem?

I do have Comcast and Gmail accounts that do not appear to have this issue but for historical reasons I would like to retain my AOL/Compuserve as my principal account.

Thank you.

I upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04, with the download Thunderbird Mail was also installed. It quite often freezes requiring me to shut the computer down and reboot. Also it will not allow me to send BCC mail. When it freezes, I get the option to wait or force shutdown. Any advice would be welcomed.

Rodney Jackson.

I'm a long time user of Linux Mint. Now on 20.3 and Cinnamon desktop. Also a long time user of Thunderbird. Now in version 91.8.1 Always used the "allow insecure apps" in my gmail account settings and used normal password stored in Thunderbird. Google urges to change the authentication method to oAuth2. Tried everything to no avail. Always "authentication fails when connecting to imap.gmail.com" Cleared all cookies, allowed them, deleted all saved passwords, followed all published advise I could find, and nothing. Then I made a brand new profile pointing to an empty dir and entered my gmail address and checked everything. Same result. In despair I installed Evolution and all run fine at the first try. Should I really give up on Thunderbird? Thanks in advance for any help!

Hello,

In January, after what I believe to be compacting issue, I lost years worth of emails in my Sent Folder. It just happened again, although I cannot seem to confirm that this is due to a compacting error this time.

After a lot of research and trying a great many solutions, nothing has worked. I cannot recover my lost emails.

I have tried the "repair folder" method.

I have tried the "delete the index (.msf file)" method.

The "Sent" file that accompanies the "Sent.msf" file is quite small; smaller than it should be.

I am worried these emails are gone forever, but I don't know the cause.

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you!

While browsing e-mails, e-mails open and when the e-mail has no photo attachments, the program behaves normally, the messages are loaded quickly. When the message includes attachments in the form of photos, various jpg, png formats, the program hangs for a moment, about 10 - 25 seconds, it happens only in the case of e-mails containing photos. I have 4 computers with the same configurations, with the same program, the same configuration, the same windows 10, the settings are the same on all computers, the same account type (POP3), the same e-mail end, and stranger the problem occurs on 2 computers and on the other 2 no, on the other 2 they have the same email with the photo message, the email is loaded very quickly, on the other 2 you have to wait as I wrote above until they are buffered, and the other 2 computers open the message preview in the same way, I couldn't find anything about it in the help, please help.

Sending of message failed. Unable to authenticate to Outgoing server (SMTP) smtp.kingharald.co.uk. Please check password and verify the Authentication method in Account settings/Outgoing server (SMTP). Emails work ok for a while, then I get a few days of this error message and then it seems to fix itself. It's not working just now. How do I fix this?

Hi all, I have two Gmail accounts, one private and one organizational, each one with its own unique problem. I access both accounts through Thunderbird for Windows, the Gmail Android app, and Chrome on my laptop. I use POP to be able to access the emails even when offline and store them in subfolders. I have learned that if I keep the messages marked as unread on the phone and Chrome, TB will download the messages.

1) My private Gmail account downloads only 4-5 messages at a time, and I have to manually hit: "get messages" many times until it downloads all the messages. Very annoying.

2) My organizational Gmail account through the university worked fine and downloaded as many new messages as were on the server. Until May 9th, when it stopped connecting with the Gmail server. It keeps asking me to re-enter the username and password (which it had saved, and hadn't changed), only to claim that Gmail is not accepting cookies. Needless to say that I haven't changed any of my cookies preferences neither on TB (which accepts all cookies) nor on Chrome (which blocked 3rd party cookies, but had an exception for the University's servers). I tried enabling any type of cookie in the account on Chrome, but that didn't help. I tried changing the authentication from password to OAuth2, and it didn't help.

I would appreciate your help. Shahar

I recently installed Ubuntu 22.04 and now the address book crashes when I attempt to use it to create an email; thunderbird freezes and give me the window stating 'not responding' and if want to force quit or wait. I end up having to force quit. But I use my address book's saved lists for a number of emails, and now this is not working. How can I fix it? I would need detailed steps, as I am not anything but a general user. Thanks.

Hi, I'm using Thunderbird chat with XMPP and Openfire as XMPP server. My only problem is that I can't transfer file on chat window. However, I can easily send files on other XMPP client such as Pidgin or AstraChat.

So, my question is, does Thunderbird chat support file transfer ?

Thx

Hi, I'm using Thunderbird chat with XMPP and Openfire as XMPP server. My only problem is that I can't transfer file on chat window. However, I can easily send files on other XMPP client such as Pidgin or AstraChat.

So, my question is, does Thunderbird chat support file transfer ?

Thx

Can you tell me how to add my Sent folder back to my Local folder? It used to be there and it's disappeared. I wish I could tell you which version of TB I'm using but I don't know where to find it anymore. I can tell you that I'm using Win10.

Thanks so much for any assistance!

After updating Thunderbird to the new version 91.9.1, most of my email messages disappeared.

An error message was displayed after updating to the new version. Thunderbird restart chashed and I started the program again, just to noticed that the messages were not anymore in the folders.

How can I recover my messages?

Andy