Reinstall Thunderbird gives me back the original which doesn't work properly
At about the time of the most recent update to Thunderbird my wife's computer started running Thunderbird all wrong. A large chunk of old messages vanished, but not the oldest, and when she deletes a message it vanishes instead of going into a Deleted file. The old messages are still on the server, but Thunderbird will not download them again, I assume because it thinks she already has them. They are there, though. I installed her email on my version of Thunderbird and it promptly downloaded all 330 of them. I assumed something went wrong in the update so I thought if I uninstalled Thunderbird and reinstalled it, all would go back to normal. I have done so with both a warm and a cold reboot after uninstalling and in both cases when I open Thunderbird, there is her account, faults and all. So the question is "How do I get rid of Thunderbird completely, so that it needs the mail-box reloaded as well?" It is beyond me why what I have done doesn't work. Is there some other way to get the program working like it used to? My wife is about as technophobic as they come and takes a long time to learn something new so please can we go back to the way we were? We are both in our 80s so new tech is sometimes a challenge. Any help you can give us, in simple language please, would be appreciated. I don't want to convert her to Access as I have never used it and wouldn't know how to teach her. Thank you, Peter
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I am unclear on the problem. Is it that new messages don't download? Is this a POP account or IMAP? I am assuming POP. Are her messages lost, or are they part of the 330 that you downloaded?
Thank you so much, David, for your response. I am sorry to be so long responding. It is an IMAP account. The current problems are: 1. A bunch of messages suddenly vanished and, although they are still on the server, I cannot get Thunderbird to download them again. 2. If she deletes a message, it disappears for good. It does not go into a deleted folder. 3. She complains there are other ways that it is different. That may just be her in that she is as technophobic as they come and the update may have changed something that you or I would not notice. 4. (Not a problem!) Current messages are downloading correctly. It is running under Windows10.
There is evidently something wrong and I hoped that if I uninstalled Thunderbird and reinstalled it, I would get a brand new copy into which the server would download all those missing messages (just as it did to me). But No. Back came the original inbox and behavior. So my question is, "How do I delete an account out of Thunderbird completely, so that I can reinstall it from scratch?" I hope that will give me a nice clean copy on my wife's computer, but I would also like to be able to delete her account from mine once hers is working properly.
Can you help, please? I am old enough to get confused by a lot of modern technology. For example it took me about 10 minutes to remember how I got into this forum to ask the question originally. Hopefully now I know!! Thanks, David. Peter
- click to 'account settings' and highlight the account to remove, then look for 'Account Actions menu in same column where you can click 'remove account.' there will appear a check box to also remove any data files. tick it. that removes the account. I would also suggest looking in profile in windows file explorer to verify nothing left. You can do that by - clicking help>troubleshootinginformation - scroll down left side to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder' - then exit thunderbird - you are now in folder. click the Imapmail folder and see if there are any remnants of the account. if so, delete them. - restart thunderbird and you should be able to recreate the account.
Thank you so much, David, for these very clear instructions. I have not actually tried it yet but I am sure it will work. Sorry to be slow thanking you; it took me 10 minutes to navigate my way to where I could. There has to be an easier way! Anyway, thanks David.
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