Thunderbird Community Forum

Thunderbird suddenly stopped working properly today, 15 September 2026. Webmail for the same email account is working normally: I can both send and receive messages. However, Thunderbird is having problems with both incoming and outgoing mail. • Thunderbird connects to the IMAP server, sometimes very slowly, but then does not retrieve new messages. • Sending a message from Thunderbird fails because it cannot connect to the outgoing SMTP server. • Thunderbird's own update also fails. This has never happened to me before. • I have restarted Thunderbird and also restarted the Mac, but the problem remains. • I have not changed any Thunderbird account settings. The fact that webmail is working normally makes me wonder whether this is a Thunderbird problem rather than a problem with the email service. Has there been a known Thunderbird problem affecting connections to mail servers or the Thunderbird updater, and could these problems be related

I recently migrated from a much older version of Thunderbird where I had been using the Mail Merge add on. In 151/152 most of the variable fields are no longer recognised. Below is the list provided by the developer. I can only get FirstName LastName and PrimaryEmail to merge correctly I troubleshot with Custom1 JobTitle and Nickname to no avail. I've emailed the developer. I suspect Thunderbird has changed the names of the fields in updating the Address Book. Has anyone got a current list of variables for Thunderbird since the Address Book has been rebuilt? Thanks, Greg

{{DisplayName}} {{FirstName}} {{LastName}} {{NickName}} {{NamePrefix}} {{NameSuffix}} {{AdditionalNames}} {{PrimaryEmail}} {{SecondEmail}} {{HomePhone}} {{WorkPhone}} {{CellularNumber}} {{FaxNumber}} {{PagerNumber}} {{HomeAddress}} {{HomeCity}} {{HomeState}} {{HomeZipCode}} {{HomeCountry}} {{WebPage2}} {{WorkAddress}} {{WorkCity}} {{WorkState}} {{WorkZipCode}} {{WorkCountry}} {{WebPage1}} {{JobTitle}} {{Department}} {{Company}} {{Custom1}} {{Custom2}} {{Custom3}} {{Custom4}} {{Notes}} {{BirthYear}} {{BirthMonth}} {{BirthDay}} {{AnniversaryYear}} {{AnniversaryMonth}} {{AnniversaryDay}}

For a week or two I haven't been able to send any email from Thunderbird. I use smtp.gmail.com as my outgoing server, and have it configured using SSL/TLS on port 465 with Oauth2 authentication. I first saw this on an older TB version, but have now updated to Thunderbird 152.0.1 on MacOS Sequoia 15.7.7.

When I try to send email, a dialog pops up saying "Enter credentials" for my account, then "Verify it's you". When I click on Next it asks me to "Complete sign-in using your passkey". I believe at this point another window is supposed to pop up and I can use a fingerprint to enter the passkey, but that window never pops up. I have tried 3 different default browsers: Firefox (my usual one), Google Chrome, and Safari. All behave the same. Firefox might be suppressing Javascript, but the other two certainly aren't.

Is there some system security setting that might be preventing Thunderbird from opening a window in the default browser, or does Thunderbird maintain its own record of the browser? Any other suggestions on how to get the passkey challenge to appear?

Hi there. I'm looking for a shortcut that takes me from the folderlist pane to the message pane and the first new message, when I'm on the inbox folder. The tab is not good. It moves between to many fields/options.

regards bjarne

Thunderbird 128.14.0esr (64-bit) on an M3 Macbook Pro running Sequoia 15.7.4

I have my own domain and email hosting. I recently changed email hosts and am seeing large files in my profile tied to the old email host. I'd like to recover 30+GB if possible but don't want to do anything hasty.

My Library folder looks like

Thunderbird - Profiles -- myprofilename.default-esr --- oldemailhost.com --- oldemailhost-1.com --- oldemailhost-2.com ... --- oldemailhost-4.com --- newemailhost.com --- newmailhost-1.com ... --- newemailhost-4.com ... etc.

The oldemailhost*.com files take up ~30GB. Can I recover that space without hurting anything?

Thanks.

Here's the big problem. At some point suddenly all of the email message thread with a person start lining up in one email. If it's all lined up chronologically, then I can get through to whatever the part or date I want to read again, however, for whatever the crazy reasons, in some parts, it's not chronological and older dates are all mixed up, and it's giving me hell!!! I asked how I can make it all separate, my friend told me to do:

Daniela Rotaru

6:48 PM (4 hours ago)

to me try this, i found this as solution, but dont know how it will look after you vhange, Maybe to try other gmail application?

Turn off Conversation View:

   Settings → “See all settings” → General → Conversation View → Off
   This shows every email separately, strictly sorted by date.

But under 'General', there is no 'Conversation View', what the heck??? 😩

Why am I not able to add a 3rd IMAP email account?

Everything comes up like before for IMAP accounts, but it does not recognize the email or password, for some reason, and I have checked them over and over.

I also tried adding manually, but although it adds the email account name, the connections don't work, and there is not much information to even adjust that.

I have been using the INBOX that is under my email address. This worked for years except one time before when the same thing happened where the messages are from years ago. I have to go further down to use ALLMAIL to get the current messages. The INBOX shows "3" while the ALLMAIL shows 5,626.

So, the INPUT is not current as before but old messages. How do I fix this?

Thanks,

Eddie

When I send an email, a window pops up that shows the sending progress. Emails appear to send and save to the sent folder just fine, but the window doesn't close and will remain open until I press the cancel button. Is it possible to fix this?

After I migrated everything to a different computer, 'Local folders' no longer appears in the side bar, so I cannot archive messages locally.

Can some kind person please help me to reinstate it?

I updated to 155.0.1 via the update modal yesterday, on MacOS Tahoe, and it didn't restart as normal. The main message pane was blank with "No Message Found" (screenshot attached).

I tried installing a fresh 155.0 over, that did not work; but, a restore of the prior app from my Time Machine did work -- that is, the application not the user profile data.

I just thought this was strange; never ran into it.

If there is an issue and I can help test it usefully, I happy to do so (I have backups! LOL).

Forrest

Have been using Thunderbird and Firefox for decades, naturally, and have several email accounts. Within each account, I'm a prolific user of folders within the respective Inboxes. For years, these folders have remained in Alphabetical Order, as when they were set up. Recently, however, for no reason that I can suss, the sub-folders in the Inbox of one of my accounts have been gone "all agley", ie. they're listed all higgledy-piggledy in random order. This isn't a problem for my message filter - but it's a real problem for me, having to scan down a very long, disorganised list to find any particular folder I want to open. I've searched for an instruction to instruct Thunderbird to arrange the Folders in my Inbox in Alphabetical Order and can't find anything. Can anyone help me, please. Many thanks in anticipation to all you helpful Thunderbird Users and Contributors. Cathleen (London, UK)

For years I have been attaching message files, pics., etc. by clicking the Attach button and browsing to the target. Now I have to drag and drop the attachments as the Attach click is useless.

Hello,

I have found that once an email is put in the trash it will automatically be removed/deleted from the trash.

Today is June 14th and there are no emails in my trash folder older than June 9th.

Is there an account setting in Thunderbird for how long an email once in the trash folder will remain there?

Note, this behavior only occurs in the trash folder.

Using Mac Tahoe latest and Thunderbird 140.11.1esr (aarch64)

Thanks so much.

I was adding some filters for senders to move emails to my local folders and such, and then I ran the filters. For whatever reason, when I ran the filters this time, thunderbird also seemingly deleted all emails from some of my web email inboxes. The only one that wasn't affected by this inbox wipe was my school email(gmail provider). How can I prevent this from happening again?

I have found in the settings where it looks like I can increase the font size to better see and read my emails, but it does not affect what I have.

How to increase font size to make reading easier?