Thunderbird Community Forum

New user - I recently moved thousands of messages from my inbox to a local folder.

At some point, Thunderbird asked me to compact folders and I said yes. I noticed today that I am now missing about 13 years worth of messages from my local inbox folder.

Since I moved them, it deleted the messages out of the original inbox (I also logged into that account via the web and they are not located in the trash on the server either). There are now only a handful of messages there.

Does compacting mean that messages are deleted? Everything else I read said specifically that it would NOT delete messages. Any tips on how I can recover some really important messages? (It deleted about 13 years worth of messages from early May 2026 back to mid-2013, so there are recent messages in there I really need!).

Steps already taken: I tried using "repair folder" and that did not work. I do not have any automatic filters set up. I tried locating my Profile, and moved the "msf" files to my recycling bin, as I read that deleting the msf file would rebuild the index and display emails that had disappeared. Nothing changed. This was new for me so perhaps I did something wrong? I haven't emptied the recycling bin yet so the files are easily retrievable if necessary.

I just replaced my WiFi router and was able to get 5 messages after new network set up, but now it can't connect to outgoing or incoming mail server.. I double checked all my setting with Spectrum and all looks good, but won't connect.

I want to change the default download protocol accessing the mail server from imap to pop3. I went into the account settings & changed the default selection from imap to pop3. But the change does not take effect. Tbird still accesses the server using the imap protocol.

Trying to setup Thunderbird for wife’s new laptop… Her 4 separate email accounts with auto setup for the IMAP server info without issues. One account however will not – VERY frustrating as this works fine on her old laptop. Thunderbird setup now appears to have an extra (4th) field required when setting up the account: Usually, its just name, email address and password. I see there’s now an extra box titled ‘Your Login’ being required for auto login. I have no idea what this field should be set to. Also, when I attempt to do a manual setup for the account, the port numbers and server names shown on the internet are completely different to those used on auto, and still get rejected. Doesn’t help that MS trying (and succeeding) to confuse us with all this “Outlook vs Outlook Classic vs Outlook.com”. My wife is unable to continue her work until I get this sorted:-( PLEEEAAASE can someone help me setup this xxxxxxx@outlook.com email account in Thunderbird as an IMAP account?

Attempting to install Thunderbird on an additional desktop using same address as my original computer has. That was my question:

Lin answered: Please quote any and all error messages you see, in full, verbatim. Screen shots would be OK.

Who is your email provider?

Have you compared all account settings, not just the email and password?

Here's my answer to those questions: "Authentication error" "probably wrong configuration, username or password."

My email provider is MTA (Matanuska Telephone Association) Yes, I currently use Thunderbird in my other desk top and it works fine.

I want to use thunderbird on a Windows 11 laptop. Tell me how to connect Thunderbird to send and receive emails from email account, jds@sefcik.net, hosted at smartmail.buz.net.

I have remote content blocked as a default. If I choose to view remote content **for an individual message**, there seems to be no way to reblock it, because the yellow bar with "options" disappears after you allow the remote content for that message. (Whoopsy! Changed my mind! Let's say I don't want the remote content to transmit that I opened the message a second time when I do so.)

Mail Content > Exceptions does not help in this case, since I allowed the remote content from a specific message, rather than allowing a wider permission, such as allowing remote content from a particular email address or website. Copying the message link into Mail Content > Exceptions (as suggested in an old post) doesn't work, either.

So it seems I am now stuck having remote content active each time I need to open that message?

Windows 11 Thunderbird = current at the time of this writing. (150.0.2 64bit)

I have filled in an un-correct password a number of times due to incorrect language setting of my keyboard. Then the popup window for this disappeared, and I cannot find a place to enter password. What can I do? It is the password for outgoing email.

I had TB on my desktop for years and finally got it also synced to my phone. Then with a failure with Windows 11 had to wipe clean the desktop and start over. Cannot reinstall TB. I obviously have the correct e-mail and password as I was able to log into Mozilla and submit this question. I believe it is a problem with my user name and what is on my phone setup does not work with my desktop reinstallation.

I have been trying to add my accounts to Thunderbird and had good success with gmail but wasn't able for Microsoft accounts. As I said in another thread (can't find the message anymore), I have 2 microsoft email account (one live.ca and one hotmail.com) and they both don't work. I was able to add them in Outlook desktop app and EM Client (a non open source software i'd rather not use) through IMAP with success. IMAP is activated in both accounts and as per Microsoft documentation the server is supposed to be outlook.office365.com on port 993. eM Client magically discover IMAP settings to imap-mail.outlook.com instead. Thunderbird opens an OAuth page and then it redirects from microsoftonline.com to localhost and fail with "Unable to connect".

2FA not activated in one account, if that matters. I have nothing running on port 80 if that matters.

I am running Windows 11 Pro 25H2. After updating Thunderbird recently to the latest version, it is crashing immediately upon starting Thunderbird, not even bringing up the initial screen.

The message is

"Thunderbird has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program."

In addition, it brings up the Mozilla Crash Reporter, which states

"We are sorry

Thunderbird had a problem and crashed. We will try to restore your tabs and windows when it restarts."

I do not want to lose all my old POP3 messages, etc.

Please help, Nina

I don't know what to do when February 29 is in my calendar, 2026 is not a leap year. I've found nothing to help me. I have the latest version if Thunderbird. Thanks

I always get: "newmsg Trojan:WIN/SuspiciousAttachmentScript.a" and "C:\Users\newb\AppData\Local\Temp Trojan:WIN/SuspiciousAttachmentScript.a" from Mcafee when I open Thunderbird. I'm only getting this in Thunderbird and suspect it's a false positive of some kind. It's still worrying and I'd like to eliminate this. This has been going on for a couple of months. I've run several cleaners and anti-virus programs on the system, but it still returns.

thanks

Have a new computer and when they transfered my information they didn't do my email. I finally got found it an downloaded it but now it won't accept my password. Plese help I'm getting desperate. Thank you Mary Ward