Thunderbird Community Forum

I want to continue using TB but a few things really make me despair of it. But there may be workarounds. If I have a question, when did these people last send me an email, or have any of these people responded to something, there seems to be no way to get to a list. But. I found a way to do it. Using sqlite3.

I have been wanting a CLI for interacting with TB for a while. You know, that folder I have with 10k+ emails and if I click on it, the UI spins forever. What is even in that?

Now I can do this: 1) copy the global-messages-db.sqlite from the active profile to another place 2) run: sqlite3 global-messages-db.sqlite 3) ```sqlite> select m1.c3author, min(m2.date), max(m2.date) from messagesText_content m1, messages m2 where m1.docid = m2.id group by m1.c3author order by m1.c3author; ... ray kiddy <ray@ganymede.org>|1732124816000000|1759268233000000 ruby29@something undefined|1756740716000000|1756740716000000 salvatore@someother undefined|1758733831000000|1758733831000000 support@linode.com undefined|1755126295000000|1755126295000000 ... ```

Holy sender dates, Batman! Now I can see the earliest and latest email sent by any user. Now I can filter, sort, and see every person who sent me something in a time period. And whether it was 1 email or 1000, I just see the names and not an enormous amount of other information.

So, is this the only way to get this? Or the best? I have no idea. Please let me know if there is a better way, perhaps one using TB itself. It would be nice.

In the meantime, I will be wrapping this in a python call, doing some formatting and it will work and I can stop worrying about not seeing their email.

I have just installed Thunderbird on Windows 11 and it has two very annoying new habits. When I click on an email it opens it instead of giving me a preview. And when I move an email to another folder it also opens that folder. Neither happened on the old computer so how can I get back to the way it used to be?

I have a message that is still listed after being deleted. When I highlight the messages listed above it and below it, I can see their contents with no problem. However, when I click on the "ghost message" listing in between them, I will see the contents of the last message viewed, not the contents of the ghost message that is highlighted.

Also, when I first open Thunderbird and highlight that ghost message first, the review pane is blank, like there is no message there. Then if I click on a different message, that message's contents will show in the preview pane. Then when I go back and click on the the ghost message listing, that pane is still showing the previous message's contents.

When I click on "delete" message, I get the constant blue indicator light in the lower right glowing and nothing happens.

Yesterday I upgraded my PC from Windows 10 to 11. Today I discovered my Local Folders are not visible. Searching tells me the messages still exist, but TB does not show the folders. I did the same upgrade a month ago on a laptop (Windows 10 Pro to 11), no problems. I didn't externally back up the messages as I am a dinosaur and don't know how, but at least they are still on the hard drive. Thousands of them though so I need the local folders back. Tried all the fixes I can find on the Community Forum, without success. Can anyone help please? Bob

I would like help removing one of the folders called drafts as it is empty and uses the other for subfolders. I have tried right clicking but it has no effect on removing it. Only the draft folder where the subfolders are located can be removed. How do I remove the extra draft folder. Thanks in advance for your help.

I'm in the process of cleaning up Thunderbird e-mail before moving to a new computer. I started with 11,593 e-mails in my Inbox and 7,799 e-mails in my Sent folder. I'm now down to 7,634 in my Inbox and 4,965 in my Sent folder. I've allocated 2 weeks for this process and found that it's taking me about 3 hours per day to meet my daily goals. I'm finding that I'm spending at LEAST half the time responding to "Empty-Trash/Compact-folders" requests. There are times I can delete 50 e-mails at a time without getting a request. Other times I will try to delete ten e-mails and get the request. With the old version of Thunderbird I could literally delete hundreds of e-mails at a time. Can you help? Russ Bukwa Yardley, PA ps. I have intentionally given you specific numbers. Based on my software- and test-engineering experience, I speculate you need to create a stress test to solve this nagging problem.

HI all. This is a good one. I recently got a MAC, my first one, so dont know much about it. I installed thunderbird and can receive via IMAP but cant send via SMTP. I have smtp setup EXACTLY how it is on my windows PC which works. When I hit send on a message, it immediately comes back with "Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) <maileserver.com> timed out. Try again. This message comes back immediately, as in .000001 second. This particular mail server I own and is on my network, and checking the logs, the request never even gets to the server, so its not a server issue. (Again, it works for all my other devices and other clients). server info, password etc are correct. I tried deleting the account and recreating it but no go. From a command tool, I can telnet to my mail server on port 25 and it answers and I can interact. If I use the built in mac mail client, it works fine. So this is definitely a thunderbird issue from what I can tell. Thunderbird 143.0.1 (aarch64) on 26.0.1 (25A362) Any tips appreciated, Im ready to take a bath with a toaster. Thank you!

thunderbird won't start after installation giving message that a version is already running. I end the task in task manager and it doesn't help, then restart with same erro. I tried deleting the parent.lock file from the profile and that didn't help. What next? Has anyone solved this issue?

For some reason (accidental key stroke?) one of my email account's folders are no longer arranged alphanumerically. How can I reset the order to alphanumerical? I can't find a menu item or setting to do this. Thanks

Hello, my email service has shut down for the second time. When asked to open, a small window appears and says the system is affected by a whatever. The window only lasts for a couple of seconds.

I tried to follow the instructions as how to get my profile, but is was lost due to an internet access cut.

Hoping someone can help. regards Stephen

Hello,

I've used Thunderbird on Linux for a while and love it! I use it for multiple email accounts from different providers.

Until recently I manually Archived email in to Local Folders on my PC. I do this to remove email from my mail providers and to avoid storage limits.

I recently learned that if I I set the "Message Archives" option to a specific folder for each account under "Local Folders" I can either manually archive there or I can use an Extension like "AutoarchiveReloaded" to do this semi-automatically. Great!

Unfortunately for my main mailbox only, despite being configured to write to a sub-folder under Local Folders, Thunderbird seems to ignore the settings. It always tries to create an Archive folder in the mailbox itself. Every attempt creates a mess which takes time to cleanup.

The mailbox in question:

• Uses IMAP
• Has "Keep message archives in:" set to "Other:" "Local Folders > Archives > (the name of the account)".

I am concerned that if I try "Keep message archives in:" "Archives" Folder on Local Folders it will combine with all my other archived accounts which are sorted in to sub-folders correctly.

Is anyone able to help please?

Thank you!

Greetings! I read everywhere that we must install the Lightning add-on to use the calendar feature in Thunderbird. But when I search for this add-on, I get a bazillion options, none of which appears Lightning. There is something called Lightning Calendar Tabs that keeps coming up. Is this it? Doesn't seem so.

Where can one download/install the Lightning add-on?

Thank you.

I am a M365 - leaver, and working several months now with Thunderbird/LibreOffice/Nextcloud. Sometimes I'm proud of what I learned and can do with the new software. Sometimes I'm a little lost in the woods.

I'm using the add-on Quicktext to insert default html text, like a template, in some of my my emails. One of the templates is a notification for my customers to inform them the invoice they received from me is not yet paid.

In the former software I was used to click in my template on a datepicker to insert the senddate of the invoice. I tried to insert a html-datepicker. This appears in the email, but is send to the reciever as a datepciker, not as the date I choose.

My question. Is there a way to insert a datepicker in a template like Quicktext, or is there a better add-on for this goal?

I have used Thunderbird for years. I am on the esr update channel, 140.3.1 esr, and it says it is up to date. I just learned that there is another update channel, called "release". My Norton Internet Security program tells me that Thunderbird is out of date, and that the latest version is 143.0.1. Maybe it is confused because of the two update channels? Why are two different configurations maintained? Is there a reason that I should switch to the other one? Thanks in advance for any clarification.

Hi!

I can't get messages from my Thunderbird account. When I click "Get messages" nothing happens and it usually says "Done" on the bottom left corner. I have to use my domain's webmail account to get my e-mail and it only allows me to read it and delete junk.

I really would love to have my Thunderbird account working again as soon as possible.

Thanks so much, Nancy Pedersen

Hello...I'm currently having a problem with Yahoo Mail having too many messages in the account, and as a result, I cannot receive new mail in my Yahoo account. It was suggested to use Thunderbird to download everything from my Yahoo Mail account. I've downloaded Thunderbird, set up the server parameters as instructed, and it appears to have downloaded (synchronized) everything just as it appears in my Yahoo Mail account, via iMap. I would like to currently (temporarily) stop Thunderbird from downloading and synchronizing with my Yahoo Mail account so that I can sort through and delete/save/organize what's been downloaded into Thunderbird, and delete everything in my Yahoo Mail account so that I can resume receiving new mail messages in my Yahoo Mail account. I like the Thunderbird app so far and am considering using it as a one stop app for all of my online email accounts...Yahoo, Gmail, etc. I apologize for taking up time and space for this question, as I'm presuming it's something pretty simple to do, but for some reason, I'm just not seeing how to do this in Thunderbird Settings. Can someone please guide me on how to do this? I used iMap to download/synchronize my Yahoo Mail with Thunderbird. Thanks in advance!!

hello the flatpak update command tells me that the runtime is eol and its used by the flatpak thunderbird. can you please update the runtime soon? i add a screenshot of the issue, its in german. please review this as fast as you can please greetings oski

In Thunderbird 143.0.1 (64-bit), my appointment invitations are no longer sent automatically to the respective email recipients, as they used to be. I can't find any settings where I can change this. Under ‘Troubleshooting Information’ in the line ‘Send appointment notifications via email’, the value is not set to ‘true’. I look forward to your help. Best regards, Thorsten

When an email that is received from a sender that has previously been marked as spam then Thunderbird activates the "beep" notification. When I tab to Thunderbird to see the email by then it has already been moved by Thunderbird to the Junk folder. This is quite frustrating as it unnecessarily interrupts workflow just to see that it was junk.

I would like it not to notify on messages that go to the Junk folder. Is there some way I can get this to work.

I am really really distraught right now. It took me two weeks to get the time and focus to write a long reply to a company's nice email to me. Stayed up till 2am to write it. Deliberately wanted to re-read it in the morning before sending. Gone. Nowhere to be found. I pressed "Save to draft" before closing my laptop. But not saved. This account actually has a "draft" folder, unlike most of my other accounts in Thunderbird, which I also cannot figure out and no one has helped me with.