Thunderbird Community Forum

Subject: Persistent Column and Folder Layout Issues — Not Being Saved Between Sessions

This is a follow-up to my previous support requests regarding two ongoing problems that significantly impact daily usability.

Column Settings I manage multiple accounts, and my preferred column layout is: Starred, Read Status, Attachment, Subject, From, and Date/Time. I do not use Threads, Correspondents, or Spam Status columns. Despite setting these preferences repeatedly, Thunderbird fails to retain them. Every day I must spend time reconfiguring columns across some or all of my accounts — the state varies unpredictably from one session to the next. This is a persistent, daily frustration that costs meaningful time. Most other major email clients save and reliably maintain column preferences. I'd expect Thunderbird to do the same.

Folder Panel Layout Two problems occur regularly when Thunderbird loads:

Folder order — Standard system folders (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, All Mail, Trash, Spam) should appear at the top of each account. Instead, Sent, All Mail, Trash, and/or Spam are frequently scattered among custom folders, with no apparent consistency.

Folder expansion — Most or all folders load in an expanded state, exposing every nested sub-folder regardless of whether they contain unread mail. This creates unnecessary visual clutter and requires manual collapsing each session.

Again, this behavior is uncommon in other widely-used email clients. Summary These are not one-time glitches — they recur daily and represent a significant usability gap. I'd appreciate confirmation that these are known issues being tracked, or guidance on a reliable fix. Reformatting the interface every morning is not a reasonable expectation for users.

We're planning to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird, but we have a hard time in harmonizing font sizes on text and signature. One of the issues is that fonts can be set to textual values tiny, small, medium, etc. w/o knowing what it corresponds to in pt. But lets explain what we tried so far: - Under Settings/ General / Language&Fonts, we defined Calibri 12 as default, what we repeated under Advanced for 'Latin' & 'Other Writing Fonts' - Under Settings / Composition, we defined Calibri / Medium for the HTML Style - The HTML-signature is defined using the Calibri 12 font But when creating a new message w/ these settings, the result is terrible as you can see in the example: disregard the fonts' color, just look at the font sizes.

Is there any simple solution?

Despite my marking messages several times as NOT spam, Thunderbird keeps on and on RE-marking them as spam. And the mails are coming from one of my own addresses, and they ARE in my address book!!!!!

There seems no way that I can stop the beast from misbehaving.

Neither my wife nor I can access email on our respective PCs. This has been the case for four weeks. We can access email by our Android phones, but we really want to use our PCs. I've tried to resolve the problem and failed. Previous to this failure, I had an account with BT but this was transferred to EE. When I attempt to log in to my mail account, I receive the message "Could not connect ... :the connection was refused". I can also add is that in my Account settings, Outgoing Mail server I see a message "Connection to server mail.btinternet.com:465 failed."

Recently it's a daily occurrence that I must enter the password for my SMTP server. I always check "Use Password Manager to remember this password" but it doesn't help. The next day I'll have to go through this again.

I power on my machine multiple times each day, and I use Thunderbird each time. It doesn't happen each time. It seems to happen only the first time I use Thunderbird each day. This is new behavior. Before it would happen now and then, now it's daily.

I don't have a Primary Password. No need for it.

If you need to see the message I can send it to you, but I'm not attaching it right now because it shows my email address and the smtp destination. Maybe I'm being too careful.

Lorsque j'essaie d'ajouter un nouveau compte, la configuration est trouvé dans la base de données des FAI de Mozilla, je clic sur "continuer", dans la fenêtre Popup j'autorise Thunderbird a accéder à mes informations, ensuite j'ai le message "erreur d'authentification". Pourtant mon mot de passe est correcte.

Hi

I have set up Thunderbird with a Zimbra mail serveur (Zimbra serveur 10.1.10_GA_4785) using the EWS new feature of Thunderbird.

I can setup the EWS account. The test of the secured connection to the server is returned valid. But in the mailbox, the list of folder is empty, and I see no email. Interestingly, I can successfully send email from this thunderbird using the exchange server as sending server.

To resume, no emails are received, but sending emails works.

So, I check the request to the exchange server when starting a synchronization : Here the result : Request : <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:t="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types"><soap:Header><t:RequestServerVersion Version="Exchange2010_SP2"/></soap:Header><soap:Body><GetFolder xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages"><FolderShape><t:BaseShape>IdOnly</t:BaseShape></FolderShape><FolderIds><t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="msgfolderroot"/><t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="inbox"/><t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="deleteditems"/><t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="drafts"/><t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="outbox"/><t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="sentitems"/><t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="junkemail"/><t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="archive"/></FolderIds></GetFolder></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>

Response <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"><soap:Header><ns2:ServerVersionInfo xmlns:ns2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages" MajorVersion="14" MinorVersion="3" MajorBuildNumber="158" MinorBuildNumber="11" Version="Exchange2010_SP2"/></soap:Header><soap:Body><GetFolderResponse xmlns:ns2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages"><ResponseMessages><GetFolderResponseMessage ResponseClass="Error"><MessageText>Cannot invoke "com.microsoft.schemas.exchange.services._2006.types.DistinguishedFolderIdNameType.value()" because the return value of "com.microsoft.schemas.exchange.services._2006.types.DistinguishedFolderIdType.getId()" is null</MessageText></GetFolderResponseMessage></ResponseMessages></GetFolderResponse></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>

The parameters ( domain replaced by *** for privacy) mail.ews.server_versions : {"https://zimbra.*******.com/ews/Exchange.asmx":"Exchange2010_SP2"} mail.outgoingserver.ews1.auth_method : 3 mail.outgoingserver.ews1.ews_url : https://zimbra.*******.com/ews/Exchange.asmx mail.outgoingserver.ews1.key : ews1 mail.root.ews-rel : [ProfD]Mail mail.server.server4.ews_url : https://zimbra.******.com/ews/Exchange.asmx mail.smtpserver.ews1.type : ews

Anyone successfully used the new EWS feature with Zimbra server ?

PS : I confirm the EWS connection with the Zimbra serveur by successfully using EWS on Outlook for android.

Today when I started Thunderbird two of my email accounts are Highlighted in RED with a RED Triangle at the end of the email address.

Both accounts are from Spectrum. My other email accounts from another provider are OKAY.

I am not able to retrieve or send emails on these two accounts. I can get my emails from both accounts when I use Spectrum Webmail. So it looks like the account information is correct.

How do I fix this?

Hi all,

I installed Thunderbird a few months ago to transfer emails from an email account that is about to be shut down to my Google email account.

I now want to uninstall Thunderbird (and delete all its files from my computer, including emails) but am worried my Google emails will also get deleted (e.g., due to syncing?) in this process.

I would have loved to keep Thunderbird installed but, due to my personal laptop being unavailable when this email transfer began a few months ago, I had to install Thunderbird on my work laptop instead, and I do not want Thunderbird to stay on my work laptop anymore (my employer allows employees to install any software but I will feel better if I just delete Thunderbird from the work laptop at this point).

Please advise, thanks.

Hello,

When I forward message with some attachments, new windows opens, with e-mail and attachments, and I can open and review them. If I edit (or not) that message, for no more than couple minutes, I can send it without problems.

But if I left windows open for some time (let say more than 10 minutest, but I not figured out exact amount), I can't view attachments. If I double-click on icons, nothing happens. If I try to send that message, I get message about missing file.

I've noticed, that after opening new window with forwarded message, attachments are copied to %TEMP% folder as nsmail.pdf (or jpg or something). After some time (10 or more minutes as mentioned before) these files disappear, and then problem begins.

The same problem occurs with MAPI generated message with attachment.

Problem tested at two PCs, one PC with 32bit viersion of TB and IMAP, and another with 64bit and POP.

[6/12/26, 10:49:22 PM GMT-4] Applied filter "Blocked Sender List" to message from The Home Depot® Consumer Credit Card <citi@info15.citi.com> - James, Don’t forget to use this special offer to get your Summer projects going! 🌼🌺 at 6/12/26, 10:02:27 PM GMT-4 deleted

[6/12/26, 10:49:22 PM GMT-4] Filter action failed: "Move failed" with error code=0x8000FFFF while attempting: Applied filter "Blocked Sender List" to message from The Home Depot® Consumer Credit Card <citi@info15.citi.com> - James, Don’t forget to use this special offer to get your Summer projects going! 🌼🌺 at 6/12/26, 10:02:27 PM GMT-4 deleted

The sent message is deleted but I get Filter action Failed.

A weird thing has started happening to my Thunderbird inbox in the last couple of days. Emails are showing as from a totally different sender. For example, a Google search on Sondheim has been "sent" by EDF (my electricity supplier) and some Groupon emails are showing as coming from people I correspond with. Also a Keto bread recipe from a low carb group I belong to has been "sent" by one of my work clients! More weirdly, I copied them into a subfolder on my inbox and they then appeared correctly. I have tried repairing the folder but it made no difference.

I have used thunderbird for many years and was always very pleased with how easy it is to search for old emails, using just about anything--an email address, a word in the subject line, or anywhere else. Lately, it no longer finds all the message for a simple thing, like an email address. Has something changed?

Also it seems that copies of my emails are not necessarily kept locally in that it often says it has to download my messages off the server, which can take a bit of time. In the past it has only downloaded new messages, but now it seems to download everything.

All this leave me with the sinking feeling that my whole online record could disappear at any minute. Any ideas?

Until recently the folder pane could be sized or hidden via the double-headed arrowed cursor. Shortly after the 151.0.1 update this stopped working. All suggested solutions have not worked. A full uninstall (Revo Uninstall) and completely new profile has not fixed the problem. Folder pane only responds to the menu setting and is only Open/close but no sizing.

I have created folders that I want specific emails to be put in when they arrive. But I don't know where to create these rules. Creating the folders is easy but how do I create a rule that tells Thunderbird which folder to put emails from specific people/businesses etc

When I try to delete mail from Deleted folder (even if there is just 1 email), the thuderbird gets unresponsive. Same when i try to select few emails (headers) for deletion or moving to another folder. Running on Windows 11

multiple copies of emails, usually old ones, cannot delete them, also cannot open new emails, often thunderbird freezes, message comes up that thunderbird not responding

I am trying to add an Proton mail account to Thunderbird using the Proton Mail Bridge (PMB). In the PMB guide it is recommended to uncheck Account Hub in the Setting>General. The problem is that the Account Hub still pops up when trying to add a new mail account - it simply refuses to go away regardless of several restarts of both the computer and the mail client!