Thunderbird Community Forum

I have found a complete folder with subfolders in my Trash at last three or four times now, and I did not move it there. The folders are still in Local Folders but they are empty and I have to move everything back. Why is this happening? Just in the last six months has this occurred.

I have Thunderbird 142-esr on a Windows 11 computer with two users in separate Windows users account. The second user (my wife) suddenly had her gmail login stop working on TB, even though it continued working on all other devices. The symptom was that the inbox would hang trying to log on to gmail, although no error messages appeared.

My account worked normally throughout this time.

After trying less destructive fixes such as closing the application, logging off, and restarting Windows, I guessed there was an issue with her account, possibly a corrupted file. So I deleted her gmail account. When I tried to create a new account, TB accepted her credentials and the Google login came up. I successfully authenticated to Google, but installation failed when I returned to the TB new account screen. After a long wait, TB issued an error message saying the password or user name was bad.

I did two tests to isolate the problem. First, I attempted to install my wife's gmail account in my Windows TB instance. That failed in the same way. Second, I attempted to install my gmail account on her Windows instance. That worked. I concluded there was nothing wrong with her instance of TB. I thought it might be an issue with her password, although Google has never asked her to change it, and there haven't been issues logging on outside of TB. Her password did not meet Google's current requirements, so I changed it to 12 characters, mixture of upper/lower case, numerals, and special characters. That worked.

Unfortunately, during the process, I lost her settings, and it took a while to recover them from backup media.

I'm posting this more to ask if others have experienced such a problem than as a request for help, as I think the underlying issue is now resolved. Because it may be some kind of malignant interaction between TB and gmail, I thought it might be worth reporting as well.

This just started 4 or 5 days ago ( 2026.1.23 ish). I did not update TB nor make any changes to the account in question (that I'm aware of). The errors show up every few minutes, with a 'beep' sound and notification pop-up showing up each time - is very annoying.

I was running v145 when it started. I saw there was an update to 147 and installed that; same issue. I restarted TB into Troubleshooting mode and am still getting the error.

This is running on MacOS 15.7.3. Hardware is MacMini (2024) with Apple M4 chip.

Generally I still seem able to received & send emails.

I opened Activity Manager and Error Console. Error console doesn't seem to have much (using 'Multiprocess', with Errors, Warnings, Logs, Debug enabled). Activity manager shows things such as:

<my account name>

   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    09:49
   Failed to connect to server outlook.office365.com.    09:52
   Authentication failure while connecting to server outlook.office365.com.    09:58
   Authentication failure while connecting to server outlook.office365.com.    10:03
   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    10:10
   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    10:14
   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    10:20

There was an error or log entry that I was able to find a few days ago that made me think it was Calendar related, but now I'm not finding that message.

I used to have Windows 10 and was using Thunderbird with Quickbooks POS 18 and if I wanted to send an email in Quickbooks like a purchase order or receipt, it would open up a mailto window in Thunderbird with no issue. I've moved to a Windows 11 computer with the same profile running a 32bit version of Thunderbird, set as my Windows default mail client, even in the registry I've set it there but Quickbooks says I don't have a default email client setup. I've exhausted every search over the internet trying to fix it. Any ideas?

When I try and "Compact" my trash folder, I get the following error message: "The folder 'Trash on redacted@gmail.com' could not be compacted because writing to folder failed. Verify that you have enough disk space, and that you have write privileges to the file system, then try again."

There is plenty of disk space, but there is no option for "write privileges". The trash folder has grown to 632 MgB even though I keep deleting old messages from the trash folder!

In previous Thunderbird versions, when you subscribed to a RSS-Feed that required authorization, Thunderbird prompted for it, just as a Webbrowser would.

I'd enter the username and password, tick the box "Save in Password manager" (or something) and the feed would come in.

I don't know when that changed, but nowadays Thunderbird just says "Feed is unautorized". No password prompt, no possibility to mark a feed as "requires Authentication".

I know I could pass username and password in the URL, but that is rather unsafe compared to saving the password in password manager protected with a primary password.

It seems that there were some bug reports some 21 years ago about the same issue, so maybe this is a regression?

Changing color of the text during composing an email does not work when I use "Choose a color" button. The color in the button changes, but when I click "Ok" the color does not change. The color change works though if: I click "Last-picked color", or when I type color name "Green" or HTML hex, and subsequently click "OK".

How to change the color of text in a composed email when

I am using Thuderbird on macOS.

When trying to run in Safe Mode, and compose a new message, I the Thunderbird stucks, so I cannot confirm in Safe Mode, but I had this issue in the past also on other machines/Thunderbird instances, so maybe someone else had a similar problem, or maybe it is a known issue, already in dev team logs.

Thunderbird 147.0.1 (aarch64, macos, m2)

Team, After spending many many hours creating 14 search-folders that can find all of the right emails in approx. 20 "real" (local) folders.

Then I renamed 10 local folders and noticed my searchfolders disappearing!?

Big panic. Now, only the last 2 created searchfolders where there. The rest was gone. Realizing that the searchfolder config is in a file called "VirtualFolders.dat" I instantly took a copy. Restart Thunderbird: Now only 1 searchfolder was left. The copied virtualfolders.dat file still had 2 searchfolders in it but the rest is gone. There is no other copy/backup of this file.

These search folders are the only thing that generated some sense in gigantic piles of email.

Does renaming local folders KILL Virtual/Search folders?

v147.0.1 (64bit) = latest I create a template. Template used by "send a new e-mail from template" works fine and send with text and pictures. All Good.

I use a Filter that sends an auto-reply from a Template. Sent message have wrong coding (Poland chars are replace to some strange characters) and no picture in it, at bottom of e-mail are some codes.

Seams of BUG in Thunderbird, a many years ago was z bugzilla for Mozilla products, now I found only that forum.

As a last resort to restore my emails after trying everything else, if I delete my account and register it again as a new account will I lose all current emails and folders?

Given Thunderbird version 140.7.1 esr (32 Bit)

Since 27.01.26, no emails have been downloaded from my ISP Server and I don't know how to fix.

Note in the version above, it says (32 Bit) but Windows 11 is exclusively 64 bit ????

Hey all, here's my conundrum:I have tbird on my phone, 12 different email addys all told. Imagine if you can my dismay at finding no passwords transferred using that quick transfer thing. Please tell me there is a way to fix this without having to manually re-enter every dang pass... Thanks

When I receive a Popup that an email has been downloaded, and I click on Delete, this action takes me to the email app. I should just delete the email and leave me where I am on my desk top, not take me to Thunderbird.

Not so much a question as an answer, but I don't have the time to get organised as a contributor. Every so often I get an email which presents as html code instead of the correct email, and I know from experience that the fix for a corrupted folder can take a long time to fully reload. The following fix for an INDIVIDUAL email works on Microsoft servers (outlook, hotmail, msn etc): 1 - note the date and time of the corrupted email 2 - using a browser log directly into your email service 3 - create folder, you could call it "repair" (if you haven't already done so) 4 - find the email in the inbox (the date and time will help) 5 - assuming the email on the server is OK, right-click and move it to the repair folder 6 - go back to Thunderbird, you should now have a repair folder containing the (hopefully uncorrupted) email (you might have to wait for it) 7 - right-click the email and move it to the inbox - it should replace the corrupted email.

So, from time to time I need to find a sent email, it is not in my sent folder, I check my settings and there it is, I then set it to use my sent folder on the IMAP server, this works for a while, but then seems the next time I want to find something in the sent folder it has reverted back. Any Thoughts?

Recently I notice if I forward an email to someone or I send an email with an attachement it is failing. Sometime I get a bounce email hours after or none at all

What am I doing wrong?

I have my calendar from mailbox.org synchronized with my thunderbird via CardDav/CalDav. I have multiple calendars in the same account (e.g. work, free time, brithdays, ...). I cannot change in which calendar an event is saved after I created it.

How to reproduce: Edit an allready existing event and change its calendar (e.g. from "free time" to my "work" calendar).

Expected behaviour: The edited event is now moved to the other calendar.

Observed behaviour: The event is not moved (any other changes to the event are saved though).

It is not the fault of my provider as it works on my phone and on their web app.

This is either a bug in any of two ways:

• It does not change calendars events but it should.
• You are not supposed to be able to change the calendar afterwards and that means the selection of the calendars should be grayed out/ give you no option to save it.

(I know I can Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V it into a diffferent calendar, which I use at moment but that costs additional time.)

Thanks for any help with this :)

PS: I have to choose a topic but the calendar is not even part of that list. What is going on there?

I have two accounts hooked to thunderbird, my work account that uses google workspace and my personal gmail account. Today, my work account went totally crazy, and it's loading emails in my inbox at a snails pace. Meanwhile, my personal gmail account loads fine. I did literally everything. I deleted and restored the accounts, then I deleted the Thunderbird app and all the library folders on my mac that had thunderbird (maybe I missed some?) Then I reinstalled Thunderbird and connected everything again. Same result. Personal Gmail imap works great. Work gmail with google workspace is incredibly slow and won't load in my inbox.

Before reinstalling i did everything, cleared cache, compacted folders, changed to not have messages stored locally. What could I be doing? Is google workspace imap having trouble?

I installed the latest Thunderbird version last week, is this a version update problem? After a full reinstall of everything, I'm totally confused now. I've gone through my settings 10 times and spent 8 hours on this today. I used chatgpt to guide me and try different things. I'm stumped, please help. I'm a donor that supports Thunderbird!!! I've used it since 2008. 147.0.1 (aarch64) Release notes

I stopped using Thunderbird in 2024 because of inability to change pw. I have same email accounts at comcast but would like to go back to Thunderbird. Currently using Comcast directly but loved TBird. I have a pw in use at comcast , how do I get Tbird to accept it for both email accounts on iphone and ios laptop?

I use thunderbird in conjunction with Firefox. Lately thunderbird will freeze. Mouse and all button work but cannot like read a email, delete a email ect. Any thoughts? Go to task manager and end task and all good. But its getting like 3 times in a 1-4 hour period now.