Thunderbird Community Forum

My reddit post is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Thunderbird/s/lM11YcRIIT

Hello,

I'm confused and slightly concerned.

Through no deliberate action by me, Thunderbird DOWNGRADED itself from the May 2026 standard release version to an AUGUST 2025 ESR(Extended Support Release) version.

UPDATE: the next application restart brought the ESR version up to date, but why was I forced onto the ESR version?!

What could have pissibly triggered this? I don't want or need ESR, and without knowing the cause, I have e no guarantee it won't happen again. Worst if all, everywhere I look, there is zero explanation for this. It appears to be fairly unprecedented.

My original installer for 102.15.1 was downloaded from the official Thunderbird site in 2025.

The sequence of events:

• I've had Thunderbird version 102.15.1 installed for awhile, but wasn't using it.
• Ysterday I opened it and connected an account.
• Today I noticed it hadn't auto-updated, so I went into the settings and clicked on the 'check for updates'.
• this brought it up to v115.10.1.
• Its success was demonstrated by me being sent to this URL after it opened: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thu.../?locale=en-US&version=115.10.1&channel=release&oldversion=102.15.1(https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/whatsnew/?locale=en-US&version=115.10.1&channel=release&oldversion=102.15.1)
• An hour later, I closed Thunderbird completely hoping it would fix a sync that appeared 'stuck'.
• When I re-opened Thunderbird, I saw the small "updating" window. It was pretty surprising since I had *just* updated.
• After Thunderbird opens, after this additional "update", the URL that I'm sent to is this: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thu.../?locale=en-US&version=128.14.0&channel=esr&oldversion=115.18.0(https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/128.0/whatsnew/?locale=en-US&version=128.14.0&channel=esr&oldversion=115.18.0)
• Thunderbird changed to a year old ESR version!

In the last months I have received e-mails that says one thing on the subject line but the content of the e-mail is an old e-mail from before. I can see in the Inbox that the subject and corresponden is related, but when I open the e-mail the address to the sender is different than expected and the content is from another, old, e-mail. If I use the web-interface to the service provider and log on to their server, the e-mail looks OK and I can see the content that I expected to be there. The service provider can't see any issues on their side and I don't have enough knowledge about Thunderbird, or the mailing protocol, to provide additional informtion to them about possible issues. It feels like the issue is on the client side, but what do I know... This has happened 5-6 times in the last 4 months. The service provider, Telia in Sweden, changed their mail server about a year ago. I have used Thunderbird, and the same service provider, for 20+ years.

I had to update my server settings in Thunderbird since I changed my email hosting provider. I had no idea I would lose all my emails and folders I created. Is there any way to get these recovered?