Thunderbird Community Forum

I am getting regularly getting a random notification sound even when no E-mails have been received.

It seems to be when Thunderbird is automatically checking for E-mails, so for example if i have it set to check for new e-mails every 5 Mins I will get a notification sound every 5 mins or whatever I set that time to.

How do I turn off this sound without affecting the notification when a new e-mail is received.

Every so often a message pops up that a folder can't be compacted because it's in use.

I don't understand why TB bothers users with this message. Compacting folders is supposed to be invisible to the user. It'll get compacted eventually, so no user action is required.

If I'm missing something, please educate me.

And if not, what's the best chance of getting it removed? Should I submit a bug report and argue that it's a bug in the design? Is a suggestion likely to do anything?

I have noticed recently that some emails automatically downloaded images. When I checked the mail content exceptions in the settings I found that there were some email addresses in it that I am 99% certain I didn't manually add. I'm aware that if I click on one of the "allow remote content from..." options in the preferences dropdown in the email, that will add the address to the list of exceptions, but again I'm pretty sure I haven't done that for some of the exceptions that have appeared in the list. Is there a way that senders can somehow add themselves to the list of exceptions without my knowledge? If there is, how do I block it? Thanks, Ian

This has just started to happen today. Each message I receive has the Message ID in the message pane header box underneath the date. Please explain why this is and can I stop this happening?

There is no immediate delete "trash can" in the message card view. Why?

Many messages can be deleted as you view them in the card. Additional steps, such as highlight-delete or clicking the dots and then deleting, are extra steps that are not only inefficient but also extremely annoying.

Can this be fixed, or is there a step I have missed to add a trash can to the card display?

16 Nov. Yesterday I finally found a competent computer consultant who was able to solve the enormous problem of getting Google and my Thunderbird linked, so that I could once again use Thunderbird.

I have noticed that the layout is different when I am reading incoming messages in Thunderbird. I used to have the list of all my contacts showing vertically to the left of the open message , in alphabetical order. That is no longer there. I need help in restoring that. Thank you.

Every time I want to print an email, the default copy number on my printer menu is shown as 2.

I don't know how, when or why this change [from 1 copy to 2 copies] happened.

I wish to 'reset' the default copy number to 1, so I don't accidentally print a second copy and waste ink, etc.

When I want to print documents stored on my PC, the copy number field on the printer menu is blank, allowing me to enter the number of copies I want - so the issue appears to occur only when I print emails.

15 Nov. 2025 I contacted a very savvy computer consultant in my area, and he was able to connect my Thunderbird to my Google account, so I can finally use my Thunderbird software again. I have a question about the appearance of a message when I open the message. In the past, I always had the list of my contacts on the left side of my screen, aligned vertically, when I had an open message on my screen. That is missing now. I would like to restore that feature, and I cannot find a way to do that. Thank you.

So many emails require me to scroll to the right to finish reading one line, back to the left for the next, etc. They hurt my head, they take fireever to read, and they hurt my right arm too. Thunderbird used to have an option to wrap messages, but it looks like it was deleted.

I tried adding the following tom my user css:

1. messagepane {

   margin-left: 45pt !important;
   max-width: 900px !important;
   margin-right: 45pt !important;

}

The margin-left works. It gives a spacer between the message pane and the folder list.

The max-width and margin-right don't work. The messages still require horizontal scrolling, and the scrollbar shifts left, right up against the text, so it doesn't give the needed spacer.

I use the spacers to avoid the parallax-induced migraines.

I have been reading the posts re this problem; there have been quite a few. Ever since I updated to Win11 (a week ago) and installed the latest version of Thunderbird, I have not had any option to allow external content in my emails. There used to be a yellow bar above the email body with an "options" button. There isn't now. I have tried checking "allow eternal content in messages" in the settings; no change.

There was a suggestion to work around this by pointing at the message and choosing "unencrypt email and copy to...(choose folder)" from the popup menu, and then read the unencrypted message in that folder. The menu I got only had "copy email link" and left me to decide what to do with it. A newsletter in HTML is very hard to read. I don't want to work that hard.

Others with this problem were using Bitdefender, and you seem to have concluded that this was a problem with Bitdefender and doesn't need any further help from Thunderbird. I do not use Bitdefender. I hope you will change your minds and address the problem. I liked Thunderbird before, and now it's turgid and hard to use. Should I downgrade to an older version? If so, please tell me how.

Some time back I learned that going to config and changing "mail.delete" from FALSE to TRUE would change the way deletion worked so that after deleting a message the cursor would move to the next most recent message instead of the subsequent one. I've now decided that indeed I preferred the default setting of FALSE. I have changed it back on my two PCs, both running Win11 24H2 and TBird 128.14. On one PC the direction was changed back to the default direction, i.e. go to the subsequent message. On the other one it still moves to the prior message. I think I have done exactly the same thing on both PCs. What do you think I might be doing wrong?

I'm using a Windows 11 laptop with a 14" laptop with a 1920 x 1200 resolution. I'm using Thunderbird to access 5 email accounts, calendars and cardBook. I'm looking for suggestions and tips about the best layout to maximise the display of my email information with the minimum of scrolling.

Thank you.

bold textA little while ago, all of the messages coming into my Thunderbird app, do not expand graphics etc in the email. I just get strings of code and web stuff.. I cannot find the setting in my Thunderbird that will cause it to automatically translate all of these codes. Help please !

How do I get back the choice to get a message brought in manually and other features that were above my account name. I unchecked a box (it was called something board) and it was gone but cant find it to restore the option. I right clicked on that to get a drop down menu with a few choices. I cant remember exactly what they said. One of the icons was for manually bringing in my mail, like a refresh option as well as some other choices beside it. This was visible above my account name which is just above the inbox. Anyone have any idea where I find that again to restore it? One click and it was gone! :-( Hope I explained it good. Thank you

Dopo aver risolto una questione di mail, ora quando" rispondo "ad una mail, non compare più l'cona di allego e quella di invio. Posso sapere dove trovarle e installarle?. Grazie

Dear friends, This is another question of the type "it has stopped to work after years of perfect service". I do: Tools/Message filters/. The filters are for me (only user). The "Enabled filters" drop-down list shows 238 items with virtually everyone enabled. Then I select folder to be filtered in the input window at the bottom; my "Sent" folder. Then, when I click the button "Run Now", nothing, absolutely nothing, happens. Normally Thunderbird lists messages like "Moved x mails from Sent to folder Y" .

Thunderbird 144.0.1 (64-bit) under Windows 10 which was first removed whereupon it was downloaded and reinstalled.

Hopefully someone has a suggestion where I can check for the cause of this error? Ch

Thank you for your help. I don't know when this started happening, but I noticed that the notification sound for new emails was not working. You can switch between the default (D) or WAV file (U) in Settings → New mail notification → Play sound, but it will not work no matter which one you select. Also, in the field for specifying WAV files, the directory of the file specified from the previous version is entered, but I cannot delete it (see attached image).

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