Thunderbird Community Forum

I create a new address book in Thunderbird. I add several email addresses to that book. I close Thunderbird at the end of the day. When I open Thunderbird the next day, the new address book has disappeared. Any idea what I am doing wrong, missing?

In reference to the article [[Knowledge Base Article|http://mzl.la/1ApHiU3]], "Move Thunderbird data to a new computer", this misses the transfer of Local Folders.

The instructions only include moving the Thunderbird application data folder with profile information but does not include Local Folders, after completing these instructions the Local Folders will not be present on the new computer.

The path for Local Folders is under Account Settings > Local Folders, this folder needs to be copied to the similar path on the new computer as well.

I have copied emails from a Windows 10 to Windows 11 computer using these instructions and it appears to work.

Hi! I'm hoping you can help me! I use Thunderbird, and have for many years, and I love it. My computer is on its last legs, and I'm trying to save up for a new one, but, yesterday I did something possibly stupid... (yeah, I know, you NEVER get people asking for help who've done stupid things, so this will be unusual... lol). Anyway... I turned my computer on and got a popup saying that my Thunderbird needs an update and it's been a while since I updated, so I hit OK on the update... Well, my arsehole of a computer chose that exact minute to shit itself and die. When I tried restarting it, my Thunderbird no longer works. Now I have a popup with a big red X that says "The installation seems to be corrupt. Please check your hardware and disk setup and/or re-install." Can you help me? I desperately need to check my email and have one I need to send. I don't know what to do. I've also got YEARS worth of emails sitting in the system, so I can't risk losing them, either. Please help. L.

I keep getting the following error when trying to download emails from yahoo.mail: Authentication failure while connecting to server pop.mail.yahoo.com Have hundreds of emails sitting in yahoo.mail that I need to load onto my desktop. Any help is appreciated!

I have an address book setup with a number of what I'll call sub books for want of a better name. I used to be able to copy a contact from the address book to a sub book. I have either forgotten how to do that or something may have changed. I tried to drag & drop the address from the main book to the sub book but that doesn't work any longer. What am I missing here?

I'm asking this question so I can post some helpful information for people wanting to create a backup of their profile.

If you are using Windows OS and you got your download from the official website: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/

How do you locate the correct folder to backup? The backup must contain everything, profiles, mail accounts, emails, address books, calendar, preferences - the lot. The backup can be used to transfer between computers.

I have four different email accounts. A week ago, all incoming and outgoing traffic suddenly stopped . Webmail works normally. I have no viruses, trojans, etc. I deleted one of the accounts and tried reinstalling it. I can't do it anymore. The system keeps responding: "Unable to authenticate to the server. Username or password configuration may be incorrect." But they are all abolutely correct. I don't know what else to do. Any clue? Thanks

I use vertical view. Hate threading so that's turned off. I use a medium to large message pane. Recently been having issues with column visibility. Not sure if this is new or whether it's that I've come to a Linux client from a Windows one and there's a setting I missed when I set up the client.

Essentially dragging the column divider doesn't work properly (for me). The columns always seem to auto adjust width. Similarly if I resize the message pane the columns don't remain fixed they auto adjust.

I don't find this helpful. I prefer to set up the columns to display the amount I want/need in subject and From and I truncate the date to simply not display time.

How do I set column widths to remain where I put them? Or is this function now lost.

Hi, I had/have an IMAP account at my ISP Host, with TB connecting to.

There has been a number of occasions where I have used the Servers IMAP copy of emails as a back up, and from memory am sure that when connecting a fresh client, all emails/folders etc updated and down loaded from the server > client, in fact nothing got deleted on either side, and both sides synced.

My host (Fasthosts - I will name and shame) deleted my whole IMAP account by mistake.

They hastily re-instated just the package but all the emails had been wiped from the server.

I did though have a full copy of all emails on my TB IMAP client.

When I reconnected my client to the server after the re-instatement, i expected my clients emails to upload to the server, but instead they 'vanished' - and I have nothing but empty folders.

Am I able to recover any of these emails from my client, ie are they sitting in a file/folder still ??

TB has restarted a number of times since, and I fear the folder may have been compacted, but I cannot be sure.

Thoughts appreciated.

I have 2 hotmail accounts - one gets mail as normal the other stopped on 28 April. Checked and settings are same for both except actual email address name. Till 28 April both worked normally. Haven't tried either starting another account for the problem name or deleting existing as don't want to lose anything. Haven't updated to latest version for same reason. How to fix please?? Cheers and thanks

Thunderbird is very glitchy and slow after the latest update - Thunderbird 140.11.1esr (20260522210329)

Especially, when I get a new email, Thunderbird stops responding for 5-10 seconds and then starts working.

I am using Windows 11

I received a spam message this morning that had a "Disposition-Notification-To" (aka Read Receipt) line that had MY email address on it. I honestly don't know why a spammer would do this - but that's not the issue. I have Read Receipts disabled, but Thunderbird generated an email (to me) and sent it to my mail host. This seems like a bug. Even if the Read Receipt has my email address on it (making it mostly harmless), Thunderbird shouldn't have generated the message. Or am I missing something? Thanks.

I can no longer download my email from the server to my Thunderbird email client since I removed the specifics for the server with the password. I need to add it back but I don't know how. Is there a file I can edit?

I recently updated windows and since then I have not been able to login to my emails and or recover contacts or calendar on thunderbird. I am able to login to my primary email but I have no contacts and am not able to login to my other 2 email accounts.

I use Thunderbird with Threaded View enabled and would like to keep using it.

What I am looking for is a way to have Thunderbird automatically keep older threads collapsed, while allowing threads that contain new or unread messages to remain expanded or become expanded automatically.

For example, a thread receives a new message - it is fine for that thread to be expanded. All other existing threads without new activity should remain collapsed. When Thunderbird is restarted, I would like older threads to stay collapsed rather than having many previously viewed threads expanded.

Is there a setting, hidden preference, add-on, or workaround that provides this behavior?

I am using Thunderbird on Kubuntu Linux.