Thunderbird Community Forum

Lately I'm having trouble with my connection with outlook. I use a free outlook email address. Sometimes (not always) when starting Thunderbird, I get the "user authenticated but not connected" warning. After a while it's working again.

I have tried several settings but can't figure out what solves this issue.

I'm using port 993 / SSL/TLS and authentication method is set to normal password.

Most of the times this works.

When I switch to OAuth2, I get the Microsoft screen to login to my work / school account which I do not have.

I've search the web to find a solution for this but I can't find it. Hopefully someone can help me out because it drives me "nuts" ;)

I think I see a pattern here, but I really want to understand it:

• If I drag a folder from the synchronizing IMAP account to LOCAL FOLDERS, it is only copied but the originals all remain on the server.

• But if I drag messages from a synchronizing folder to a folder in LOCAL FOLDERS, they are moved and deleted from the server.

• Or anyway, whatever the server really does with deleted e-mails, this is the way it looks in Thunderbird.

Any other guidance about moving/copying/archiving? I really don't want to mess this up.

From the article "Microsoft OAuth Authentication and Thunderbird in 2024" there is a screenshot showing a OAuth2 option for the SMTP server setting with STARTTLS connection security. It does not appear for me. There are only the five options, as shown in the screenshot. How do enable the option to be available in the drop-down list or set it?

The available options are:

No Authentication Normal Password Encrypted Password Kerberos / GSSAPI NTLM

I am on Thunderbird version 115.12.1 (64-bit), Windows 11, version 23H2, build 22631.3737

Hi, I've received the email below from Microsoft today.

I have 15 email accounts linked to Thunderbird mail and use up to 5 of them daily. Sometimes 'instant' communications on one or more of my accounts can be important.

Will Thunderbird mail still function in the same way from 16th September?

I apologise if this question has been answered somewhere else. I searched but could not find it.

"The safety and security of your information is top priority for Microsoft. To help keep your account secure, Microsoft will no longer support the use of third-party email and calendar apps which ask you to sign in with only your Microsoft Account username and password. To keep you safe you will need to use a mail or calendar app which supports Microsoft’s modern authentication methods. If you do not act, your third-party email apps will no longer be able to access your Outlook.com, Hotmail or Live.com email address on September 16th.

What do you need to do?

If you are receiving this email, you are currently using an email or calendar app that uses a less secure authentication method to connect to your Outlook.com email account. You will need to upgrade your third-party mail and calendar app to a version which supports modern authentication methods.

Microsoft provides free versions of Outlook for your PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices which can be easily downloaded and connect to your email account. Using an updated version of an Outlook application will ensure you are connecting in the most secure way.

How can you set up your Gmail, Apple Mail, or other third-party mail application?

Various non-Microsoft applications will have their own steps for connecting to your Outlook.com email account using modern authentication methods. See our help article - Modern Authentication Methods now needed to continue syncing Outlook Email in non-Microsoft email apps. However, you may need to contact the creators of those applications to provide you with instructions. In many cases, simply removing and re-adding your account with the latest version of that application will configure it to use modern authentication methods."

I have followed all instructions both thru gmail and Thunderbird. I have tried to use different email/gmail accounts and have triple checked all entries and settings are correct. Am 'normally' reasonably tech savvy but this one had got me. Error message: Unable to log in at server. Probably wrong configuration, username or password.

Please help...at head banging stage :(

I have been using Thunderbird address book synchronized to Google contacts but it has stopped synchronizing this summer. I had been able to find new contacts in contacts.google.com add a label then later I found that they had synchronized and were in my various instances of Thunderbird.

This was working fine in the winter this year. But I added a contact this way in the summer and the contact has not appeared in any instance of Thunderbird Address book.

I am using Thunderbird 102.14.0 with Windows 7 and 10. But Linux may be using an older version Ubuntu is on version 102.15.0. The issue seems to have arisen this summer.

I disabled a few years ago; TbSync, Cardbook, Google-4-TbSync, Provider-4-CALDAV & CARDDAV, when Thunderbird Address book started to work with Yahoo and Gmail address books.

The only add-on that I use now is LT for grammar and spell checking.

Hi, every now and then, the local folder of my Thunderbird account (C/users/'myuser'/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles) starts growing endlessly. At some point there is no space left in my PC and I have to remove thunderbird and re-configure it from the start. For instance, now it's 43.3 GB large (it can go up to > 150 GB), but the inbox and outbox folders are ca. 14 GB (checked from 'Folder properties' inside Thunderbird). It is apparent that there is something wrong and I am tired of this situation. Could you help me ? Thank you Lorenzo

I very very recently upgraded to Windows 11, but even though I have Firefox and Thunderbird running with no problem, when I click on an email address on a website, instead of going to Thunderbird, I get some Windows email app that I never saw when just a month ago when I was still using windows 10 clicking on an email address would bring me right to Thunderbird. How can I get Windows 11 to use Thunderbird and only Thunderbird. I am not a techie, so if you know a solution, please be as clear as possible. Thank you.

That is the actual email that is has been sent, received, and saved. I don't want to lose it for legal reasons. Also will the address book sync with my Google contacts?

Threading is useful but can be very confusing, especially when coupled with unified folder view and lots of messages on different emails all relating to the same topic spread over different email addresses and lots of local folders. So I am looking for a master switch rather than turning it off on individual headings (or files or whatever). Bear with me I am an old man! Running Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 home various configurations

Tonight I accidentally mistyped my password upon starting Thunderbird, so I chose "enter new password" and retyped it correctly. But now it won't download my mail, and I can't find any way to try entering the password again. (My password is not saved.) When I click "Get messages" the blue progress bar flickers at the bottom of the screen briefly but the Activity Manager remains blank. No mail is downloaded and there are no progress messages. There is also a small "null" note at bottom left, not sure whether that's related.

I have tried restarting Thunderbird several times, and restarting my computer entirely. No difference. I went into Settings / Privacy and Security and confirmed that there is no password saved. None of the settings have been changed. But I'm not getting an error message when I try to download mail, it's not doing anything at all (aside from the brief flicker of the progress bar).

I tried sending a test message and got the error "Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because connecting to Outgoing server (SMTP) smtp.theworld.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." But none of my settings have changed. I can access my mail via web server so there isn't a problem with the ISP. But answering mail that way is really clumsy and time-consuming. I need my Thunderbird!

I am using Thunderbird 102.12.0 with Windows 10 Pro. I have been a happy Thunderbird user for many years (since 2015 I think) and have never encountered this problem before. I really hope you can tell me how to solve it, I am aware of several time-sensitive messages in my mailbox and I can't download anything. Thanks very much for your time!

I have been using Thunderbird with multiple POP accounts for about 15 years with few problems.

Since upgrading to the latest version, with was about a week ago, emails are downloaded again and again, for as long as they remain on the server, which is for most accounts 7 days.

I can see the emails are marked as read on the server (my host is X-10 Infinity and been using them for 4 years), but every time Thunderbird connects to the server, it downloads all the messages again.

My mailboxes are filling up with duplicate messages, sometimes 10+ copies of each one. I haven't changed any settings on the server or in Thunderbird, so not sure what is causing this.

If I click to Get Messages manually, Thunderbird only downloads 1 or 2 messages, if anything. But for some reason when the scheduled connect runs (for example: every 30 minutes) it seems to pull down all messages in the POP mailbox again and again.

Is there anything I can set or change to fix this please, or is this a bug you are working on?

I really don't want to change so I download messages from the server and delete them immediately rather than in 7 days as this allows me to have a backup in case my computer needs to have a re-install.

Thanks for any help. I'm sure I'm not alone with this problem.

Tony Payne

The inbox had about 18 months worth of emails. I deleted three emails that had been flagged by Thunderbird as spam. Then I went to the trash folder and permanently deleted the trash that included many other unwanted emails.

When I returned to the inbox, the full list of emails was present but after clicking on any email there was no email content shown. A new email came in and the content was shown for that email.

The sent folder still shows all the sent emails.

After looking for solutions on the web, I selected the inbox, right clicked and opened properties. I then selected "Repair Folder". Now, the only email shown in the list is the new email that came in after the issues started.

I have looked for crash reports and it says there are no crash reports.

Suggestions....? Thank you, Peter

I just update Thunderbird to 115.4.1 and now it uses two lines for each email in the list. This significantly reduces the number of emails visible and makes then harder to read as the subjects and correspondents are mixed. Is there a way to restore the one email per line mode?

I am getting the Mozilla Thunderbird Email wants to access your Google Account all the time while using TBM, I have removed the gmail account and the pop up does not show, so I know it is for the email account just removed. I re-add the email address and enter the email address and password and let it find the config itself. Click Done, and get the Mozilla Thunderbird Email wants to access your Google Account again, then click Allow and get the Authentication failure while connecting to server imap.gmail.com. message in the bottom left of my desktop. How can i get gmail to work again please.

I have 4 email address/accounts setup in Thunderbird (V 115.3.0) that accesses email through my Spectrum/Charter carrier. I am running Win 10 with all latest updates on a desktop PC, AVG free AV, and Defender firewall.

After the last 2 Thunderbird updates, my outgoing mail has began to fail. It was working fine before the updates. I have checked all settings in TB and have found that all of the SMTP settings are entered correctly, except some settings keep changing automatically.

The problem has been traced to the Account Settings/Edit SMTP Server where the last line for User Name is NOT stable for all four accounts. When the Account Settings User Name in the SMTP Server setting matches the account User Name in the Server Settings menu, outgoing mail works fine. However, when I try to use one of the other email accounts to send an outgoing email, I then get the error message below:

“Sending of the message failed. An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server responded: <warrenp3@charter.net> sender rejected. The email address you are sending as must match the email address you used to auth. Please check your SMTP settings. AUP#Out-1500. Please verify that your email address is correct in your account settings and try again.”

I find that the User Name in the new 2nd email account now matches the User Name from the first email account. Now the 2nd outgoing email won’t work until I change the 2nd account’s User Name to match the 2nd email’s account. Unfortunately, changing the 2nd email setting with it’s own User Name then also changes the first email’s User Name to the 2nd one so that it now will get the above error message. I now have to back and forth like that in order to send emails from different accounts. No email account saves the User Name for it’s account nor do the passwords get saved for each account.

So help me resolve this issue. What can I do to correct these errors and get back to a usable email Thunderbird usage? HELP

Recently, my College switched to Outlook 365 mail.

I'm running the latest 64 bit Thunderbird on Windows 10.

We use OAuth2 for incoming and outgoing.

Incoming server is outlook.office365.com. OAuth2 is an authentication option. Fine. I use Microsoft Authenticator, and it works.

But, Thunderbird will not or cannot use OAuth2 on the SMTP sever, smtp-mail.outlook.com. It simply doesn't list the OAuth2 option. Even if I go back in and try to edit the server, it won't give me that option.

Other clients detect it fine.

I am using TB 115.2.2 I see a number of posts with the same problem, but I don't see any help replies. Most of my received emails display correctly, but some have the posted problem. I have View > Message Body > Plain text.

          View > Headers > Normal.

What do I need to do? Thanks. Jerry

I have an IMAP email account with Virgin Media. I have been backing up my Thunderbird email as follows (not sure where I found this method) WIN + R %appdata%/Thunderbird/ Ctrl A Drag all files to External Hard Drive When I open the Backup file there are two files Open 62hcjzp7.default-release (whatever that all means) there are loads of folders one being MAIL Thus contains all my folders from Local folders For every one there is a File and an MSF File How do/Can I restore these to my current version of Thunderbird? I have tried Import from another Thunderbird installation, Profile folder Open the back upp and Select Profiles Tick Mail messages. It says Compete but never copied anything It does create an empty folder under Local Folders in Thunderbird.

My question is can I restore from this backup? If not, what is the best way to backup and restore Thunderbird? Bill

Good morning Windows 10, TB 115.11.0 32 bit. Multiple email accounts, some gmail, others like sfr, lol and free. All accounts use POP. All working before weekend, shut down the PC. Monday morning, opened Windows, all seems there except TB which has a screen with an Account Setup tab inviting me to set up an existing email address. Close that tab and the attached screen image appears, open tabs blank, no accounts pane on the left, no emails, no local folders. Nuffin. Restart TB and Windows, twice, still Nuffin. Look in Profiles, yes, under Mail all profiles appear to be present and the correct size. Going to gmail’s on line email system shews account open and receiving email normally. I had a problem a month ago after a TB update when all accounts were present but no emails were displayed. I changed the password to 0auth and recovered my emails. That took three days to resolve and I lost a business client through the delay in responding. Today I must file several court documents or I shall be in deep poo. Any suggestions how to recover the left hand accounts pane and see the accounts and folders will earn my undying gratitude.