Thunderbird Community Forum

Love Thunderbird - thanks!

Can't seem to find what folder an email is in doing a search. The list of results doesn't show it and can't see it in the email. Maybe missing something. I sort emails by folders so not knowing the folder makes it hard to find what folder it is in (such as I may want to move that email).

Jim

I've used Thunderbird on a pc for decades, love it. Today when I opened it, the 'top level' of folders is entirely missing, it shows only Local folders. I've checked that 'Folder Modes' is set to All Folders, and now I don't know what else to try. Any advice greatly welcomed, I'm struggling to get work done using webmail or phone!

I use Thunderbird 159.0 (64-Bit), german version, on Windows 11. I have integrated as well 2 local calendars as well as 3 calendars maintained on my synology disk station. Today I have noticed that Thunderbird Calendar does not work anymore: I do not see my calendars (the calendar sheet is empty) and the tool does not react neither on the calendar options (the three dots ...) nor on add calendar ("Kalender hinzufügen"). Is it possible to reset or de-installate the calendar tool? Or to delete an re-add the calendars?

(The calendars on my disk stations work fine on the disk station and are still accessible with Android Business Calender.)

Hello My previous computer has crashed. C:/ is not available any more. In my previous computer, I had two hard drives: a C:/-drive (an SSD) where Windows and other software were installed, The second hard drive was a conventional drive (D:/) where I stored all my files, documents, images, and so on. On this d:/ I also had several programs installed including Thunderbird. On that previous computer, I saved and organized my emails into subfolders within Thunderbird.

Is it possible to recover my address book in Thunderbird? Is it possible to find/recover my saved emails? Could they perhaps be saved somewhere on my previous C: or D: drives?

I have an old copy of my C: and D: from 2025 I have also a complete copy of my D: from my old computer.

I have now bought a new computer and installed Thunderbird. I would be very grateful if this could be resolved. Kind regards Anders Quant

My Thunderbird installation (159.0/Windows11) has evidently just updated, and my Calendar tab is suddenly a complete blank space. There's a support article here that appears to discuss exactly this situation, and gives precise steps for getting into "Config Editor" in Advanced Settings, entering a long search string, and issuing a Reset command. (Mail and contacts are just fine.)

Which I tried...

But there is no "Config Editor" button in the dialog I get when clicking Advanced Settings at the bottom of the Settings tab, only a mostly blank screen with no list of settings and a dialog box in which one can enter text (with options for "Boolean", "Number" and "String"). And entering the search string given in the support article produces, with a bit of finagling, a toggle that will change its setting from True to False and back again (and a trash-bin icon that offers to delete it), but neither "True" nor "False" produces any instance of a "Lightning" extension in my list of extensions (which is short and uncomplicated), so (a) I can't delete the extension as instructed, because it's not there, and (b) restarting Thunderbird only continues to give me the unhelpfully blank Calendar tab. (And I do mean "blank" here - there isn't even an empty calendar grid on that tab at this point.)

I *think* the article is probably right that my data is still there (I can see .ics files with current dates in File Explorer), but at this point I can't get at it and can't seem to get the interface unstuck.

Is there a way to pin an email to the top like Outlook? also, I would love to be able to create a unique signature like Outlook. Is that possible too? I tried to just copy and paste and it came out much like this. Crappy.

Thanks!

This has happened twice now when I open Thunderbird. My first email account on the left pane comes up with just the name of the account, no inbox, no folders, no nothing underneath it and it does not expand to show them. I'm not sure why this is happening, but the first time I actually had to completely delete and readd that account to fix the problem. I've searched various places for answers -- change folder views, change layouts, various other suggestions -- but nothing works to resolve the issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is really annoying.

I'm having problems with my default email account in thunderbird which might have started with the 28/10 update. Most times when I open TB the default account has no folders (inbox, spam, etc). To get them to appear I have to restart it. At other times it has all the folders present and all expanded including archives. When I can access my inbox the sort order is always by date descending so the oldest email is at the top which I don't want. If I click it to set it to ascending order it sets back to descending the next time I open TB. I've tried repairing the inbox but it makes no difference.

Wenn ich im Terminkalender einen Termin neu eintrage oder bearbeite erschnt ein Bearbeitungsfenster. Darin sind alle Eintragungen weiß auf schwarzem Hintergrund (OK).

Nur im Teilbereich "Beschreibung" erscheint seit einigen Wochen der Text schwarz auf schwarzem Hintergrund und ist daher nicht lesbar. Erst wenn dieser Text markiert wird, erscheint er gut lesbar weiß auf blauem Hintergrund.

Wie kann ich die Schriftfarbe hier wieder zu weiß auf schwarzem Hintergrund ändern?

Since yesterday , Thursday 29th October. Thunderbird has only been displaying the "Inbox" for my account, no emails are visible in it and all of the directories including the deleted emails directory and spam directory are absent. I have Windows 11 installed. I am using the IMAP server for incoming email and have checked that all the settings are correct. My account displays no incoming emails but can send emails. The directories are still absent when running Trouble shooter and the inbox is still empty. In the Account Settings - Server Settings I tested connection to the server and it said secure connection made - this worked for both outgoing and incoming servers. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Thunderbird but the issue persists. Although I do not change any settings the full set of directories will occasionally appear along with some emails and then seconds later disappear again. My email account is working fine on my phone and tablet using gmail.

I have used Thunderbird for years but now I am getting frustrated. I have 2 spam folders that randomly put valid emails into them and I have normal folks sending me emails that either go to spam or directly to trash. How do I totally reset this program to start over again for normal use? Thanks, Vern

Thunderbird does not download SPAM until I open the spam folder

This is an existing TB account installed on a new pc, and somehow I failed to copy the spam list across. So for the next few weeks it has to learn all over again. And at the moment there are a lot of false positives.

So when I click on the spam folder it takes some time for all the messages to download. I'd like them to download automatically, so when I click on the spam folder the messages are all there waiting for me

Yes it's IMAP

Over the past couple of days, I've discovered new mail in my inbox but the new mail icon (with the red dot) doesn't show in the system tray.

I get notifications of new mail, which is fine if I'm sitting at the computer. But the icon in my system tray doesn't change, so I never know if mail has arrived while I was away.

I've tried everything - both in Thunderbird settings and Windows system tray settings - and nothing is making a difference.

Is this happening to anyone else? Might it be a bug?

Averill

Current official docs explains how to backup and move your profile, it assumes you only have one. I have multiple profiles which means about a 20GB backup but I only want to backup one specific profile (<2GB).

The backup is not for recovery but I need to keep a history records for a specific account which can be accessed through Thunderbird even if the original email account no longer exists.

To backup/copy its recommended to do it for this folder %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\ (about 20 GB)

While all I need is %APPDATA\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxx.default-release\ImapMail\Important_stuff* (2 GB folder and .msf file)

Any better solutions than these?

1. Use a backup method that excludes specific folder and files in backup/copy of
2. Have a completely different installation of Thunderbird that only does the Important_stuff account (Thunderbird portable looks like it might do the job).

I suspect the first version will pick up a lot of unnecessary configuration and other stuff.

The release notes for TB 159.0 indicate that MS Exchange calendars are now automatically detected. I have tried deleting my old EWS MS Exchange email account, and adding it back in using the Graph option. Email is working just fine, but no calendar was detected. Can anyone offer some assistance? Much appreciated!

Lyle