Thunderbird Community Forum

I have been using Thunderbird for 10+years and was able to set up Gmail accounts without any problem. Currently, there are 3 Gmail accounts configured under Thunderbird and those all are working fine. I needed to add one more GMAIL account, everything seems to go through OK, but near the end, it fails with an error message: "Unable to login at the server. Probably wrong configuration, username or password."

I also installed Thunderbird on MAC and repeated the same steps to configure GAMIL account and got the same error message.

The same errors occur if I configure APP PASSWORD in Gmail and then try to configure GAMIL account in Thunderbird using APP PASSWORD. Still got the same error message.

HELP PLEASE

For the last 2 months I have been working to configure Thunderbird to fully replace my Gmail UI usage after their recent change to workspace options and using data to train gemini. When you deactivate those gmail features the first thing you lose are tabs for your Inbox, your Updates and your Promotions.

So far I have used tags, ThunderAI, Ollama and a locally hosted LLM to replicate the sorting of my inbox, but now I would like to be able to configure the Thunderbird UI to allow separate tabs in the menu bar for different folders, in this case Inbox, Updates and Promotions. With Inbox still being the gmail hosted main inbox and Updates and Promotions now being local folders stored in my local thunderbird installation.

Can the Thunderbird UI be configured to display folders as tabs as a default setting? I tried the "folder selection" button under customize on the toolbar but that just gives me a drop down, which is not what I want.

Mail filters for custom headers like List-Unsubscribe, Authentication-Results or Received-SPF copying messages from IMAP accounts to Local Folders do not work on the Yahoo! IMAP account. For example:

filter1.jpg: name="_Inbox2: List-Unsubscribe <https" enabled="yes" type="17" action="Copy to folder" actionValue="mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Inbox/_Inbox2" action="Stop execution" condition="OR (\"list-unsubscribe\",contains,<https)" (should copy messages from IMAP folders to _Inbox 2 on Local Folders)

filter2.jpg: name="Spam: Authentication-Results dkim=unknown | Received-SPF fail | X-Antivirus-Status Infected" enabled="yes" type="17" action="Copy to folder" actionValue="mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Junk" action="Stop execution" condition="OR (\"authentication-results\",contains,dkim=unknown) OR (\"authentication-results\",contains,dkim=perm_fail) OR (\"authentication-results\",contains,dkim=none) OR (\"received-spf\",begins with,fail) OR (\"received-spf\",begins with,softfail) OR (\"received-spf\",begins with,none) OR (\"x-antivirus-status\",is,Infected)" (should copy messages from IMAP folders to _Inbox 2 on Local Folders)

But filter3.jpg for Subject works well: name="Inbox" enabled="yes" type="17" action="Copy to folder" actionValue="mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Inbox" condition="OR (subject,doesn't contain,t[k\6iq69pd+}'cr)" (copies all remaining messages from IMAP folders to Inbox on Local Folders)

(the snippets above are fragments of the msgFilterRules.dat file)

Filters1 and 2 work well on other IMAP accouns, like for example wp.pl. So this is about Yahoo or something is corrupted. My question is, what wrong is here ? And by the way - how to create filter copying all messages from IMAP to Local Folders ? Is better way then filter3 looking for random string in the subject or somewhere else ? Thank you.

I keep my mail (both sent and received) in local mail folders. My server is gmail, and sent mail is put in gmail's sent folder by default. Every few months, I copy those messages to a local folder, and after I back them up, I delete the server copy.

What to my dismay, I discovered today that only the message headers, and not the messages were present in the local folder, though they had been when downloaded. Looking at the file sizes, I found the sent file to be 0 Kb, and sent.msf 255 Kb, when sent should have been around 60 Kb long.

I have been able to restore the messages from backup (whew!), but I have no idea how then sent file was wiped out. I know I did not do it.

Has anyone else had this happen? Is there a preventive measure I should take?

Hi, I use thunderbird as both POP and IMAP through gmail. I keep all my emails on my POP thunderbird desktop client. I use IMAP on my thunderbird laptop client, iPhone, iPad via Apple mail when remote, then download the emails to my desktop.

What I want to do is read emails and set them to archive on my IMA laptop, iPhone, iPad. I know Gmail tags the archived emails. How do I stop thunderbird from downloading the archived emails to my POP thunderbird desktop client?

Thanks! Art

I successfully set up three of my Google Gmail addresses on Thunderbird. I tried to set up my fourth and primary Email address, which is on a Spectrum server, using the absolutely correct address, user name, and PW. Thunderbird will not accept it, saying there is an "authentication error", but not identifying what it is. How is it possible to fix an error, if no precise error is specified? Thanks for any help anybody can offer.

Phil (cpliechty@gmail.com)

Had a double disaster, both OS partially upgraded at same time due to space issues and had to wipe and install.

Ended up with a TB install in Ubuntu where 2025 emails are missing. (see image #1) Found out that my backup should have most of them. (see image #2)

How do I safely identify the 2025 mail content in my backup folder, and how do I safely copy them over to the existing set up?

I see that the 933 profile exists in both so most likely it should be one of the lower number profiles in backup I need.

Attached are images of folder content.

Many thanks in advance!

I am trying to set up a visualization of the columns of the main interface. Here's what I do:

1. Click on the list icon in the top right corner.
2. Uncheck the columns I want to hide. Specifically, From (CB), Recipient (CB), and Correspondents (CB).
3. Apply the selection to all folders: click on the icon in the top right corner, apply columns to.. > folders and its children... > select account > Confirm

These actions produce immediate results. However, the next day or a few days later, when I reopen the program, the column display changes. Sometimes in the main folder (inbox), sometimes in the subfolders.

Is this a known bug? Is there anything I can do to keep the desired column configuration stable?

good day, i'm trying to add a new GMX email account to thunderbird, but i keep getting an error telling me that the user name and or password are incorrect, but they are not. i already have two (2 ) other GMX email accounts on thunderbird and they are working just fine. i had a similar issue last week with my Hotmail/Outlook account telling me it couldn't connect for the same reason, but that seemed to work itself out and that one is working fine. i've been using thunderbird for quite a while now and never had any issues integrating GMX email accounts. thank you for your time...Mike S

Ich erhalte die Meldung "Nachrichten konnten nicht in die Mailbox-Datei geschrieben werden. Stellen Sie sicher, dass das Dateisystem Ihnen Schreibrechte einräumt und genügend Speicherplatz zur Verfügung steht, um die Mailbox zu kopieren." Speicherplatz ist genügend vorhanden. Bis jetzt konnte ich meine Emails problemlos abholen. Bin erreichbar über Telefon [edited] oder Handy [edited phone#'s from community support forum]

I can see where the Local Files are saved under .sdb folders and msf files. I can save these to a USB stick as a backup BUT can I perhaps open on another device also running Thunderbird. Is this possible and how? I can't see an 'open file' in Thunderbird.

Hi,

My mail account was recently migrated to office365, and I saw that Thunderbird v145 and later supports this natively without the use of a plugin.

However when I follow the instructions to set this up I don't see the Account hub in the same way that's shown in the article.

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/11/thunderbird-adds-native-microsoft-exchange-email-support/

instead I see the one attached.

I've tried this on both Linux (ubuntu 24.04) and Window 11 both with my original profile and a completely blank installation. On Linux I've used both the Canonical supplied Snap (from the monthly/stable channel) and the download directly from thunderbird.net.

Any help appreciated.