thunderbird is not downloading emails from yahoo
I have three separate Yahoo email accounts. I set up Thunderbird to link to each Yahoo email account separately. It worked fine for a year or more. On 5/25/26 one of the three Thunderbird email accounts stopped downloading emails from Yahoo. I could see at the bottom bar Thunderbird indicating that is was downloading 1 of XX emails, but never actually downloads them. There is no error message. I checked the Yahoo email account to verify the number of emails I am missing from Thunderbird and the number is correct. I can see the emails in Yahoo. I'm the only person using Thunderbird, so no changes have been made to previous settings for retrieval. I confirmed Security and server settings for Thunderbird in and out going emails, and Yahoo are correct. I tested the connection in Thunderbird, and the connection is successful. I tried to send an email from the Thunderbird account having issues, and the email was sent and received by the recipient. The recipient replied, and Yahoo received the email, but failed to download it to Thunderbird...along with all the other emails since 5/25/26. I unlinked the account and reestablished the link between Yahoo and Thunderbird, and still not fixed. I tried restarting the computer, with no change. I tried to send an email from Thunderbird to one of the other Thunderbird emails and it was sent and received. I made changes to Thunderbird to force the download of emails, and it still wouldn't do it. I turned off my antivirus, closed Thunderbird, and restarted it, and that didn't change anything. The capacity of emails on the email in question only has 739 emails, so it's not over the limit and I have plenty of storage capacity. Thunderbird is set to save emails, Cookies and cache were cleared, no change. I ran the folder repair feature in Thunderbird, but there was no change. I compared all the settings between the other Thunderbird emails that are working against the one that isn't, and they are all the same. There was a suggestion to close out of Thunderbird and delete the "Global-message-db.sqite" file from the Thunderbird profile in case it was corrupted, and it would recreate this file when Thunderbird was restarted. The file was recreated, but it didn't fix the problem. There was mention that a suspicious email in Yahoo might be blocked by Thunderbird, so I placed various emails in the spam folder, and it didn't work. I did find one email in the Yahoo spam folder that was dated before 5/25/26 and moved it to the Yahoo inbox. Lo and behold, that one email downloaded to Thunderbird. So there is something within Thunderbird preventing emails from downloading after 5/25/26. I've read many people complain about similar download failures with no solid fix. Someone mentioned it fixed itself on a day, but then stopped again days later. Someone else mentioned Yahoo changed its password protocol to transfer emails, but that doesn't make sense since the other two are still downloading based on the "old" password protocol. I'm at wits' end. Thanks for reading all of this. I hope someone has a solution.
Solution eye oponami
I finally figured out what the issue was. It was an email from USPS Tracking (not Informed Delivery). After moving the 68 emails that were not downloading from Yahoo to Thunderbird from the Inbox to the Spam folder, I began moving the most recent emails from Spam back to the Inbox. I previously moved the oldest email from Spam to the Inbox. When I moved the most recent email, the emails were now downloading from Yahoo to Thunderbird. I kept doing this until it stopped downloading, and discovered it was the USPS tracking emails, auto-reply@tracking.usps.com, preventing the downloads. I had 4 USPS Tracking emails. After successfully downloading all the non-USPS tracking emails from Yahoo to Thunderbird, I tried to figure out how to add the USPS email to the Exceptions in Thunderbird. I first tried to add the USPS tracking email sender to my contacts. I copied and pasted the email to my contacts in Thunderbird so it would be approved automatically. But the USPS Tracking emails still wouldn't download to Thunderbird. I added the email to Exceptions, and that didn't work either. Thunderbird used to be able to download USPS Tracking emails, but around 5/25/26, something changed in Thunderbird. It has to be something within the USPS Tracking message. To avoid this issue in the future, I went to USPS and changed my Informed Delivery notification for "Package Tracking notifications" from email to text notifications. So, anyone else having this issue should go to their Yahoo email and move all the emails that won't download to a third-party email service into their Yahoo spam folder. Then begin moving the most recent email from spam back to the inbox. When the third-party email stops downloading emails from Yahoo, that is the email causing the problem. You'll have to find a way to deal with this issue. Hope this helps others encountering a similar issue.
Ezalaki modifié na geeproperties
All Replies (22)
Save yourselves some issues. Just disable email scanning in your antivirus and all of this will stop happening. My experience with Norton is is has a turn off option and it lies. Removing it or restarting in Windows safe mode with networking is the only sure way.
Details on what happens
Thunderbird initiates a get mail using POP. The antivirus starts getting involved by hyjacking the entire connection using man in the middle hacking. You get some email Then the download strikes one the antivirus can't handle. anecdotally these are generally malformed spam) The antivirus drops dead on the job and the connection to the mail server goes with it. The server times out do to inactivity.
What does not happen The server never get told to delete the downloaded mail. (that happen after the downloads complete) Thunderbird never updates to popstatedat file in the profile for the mail it did get because the fonnection failed
The result. Next time you connect the antivirus does exactly the same thing, the same collection of email is downloaded and again the same failure occurs. Groundhog day all over again.
There are many workarounds suggested mostly about deleting the content of the online spam folder as the malformed mail is usually SPAM or the next mail in the online inbox after the email you already downloaded to Thunderbird.
The real cure is get the problem making product out of the equation.
For those with no antivirus, you need to determine what else in your TCP/IP stack is blocking the download process. If your issues are exclusively restricted to a yahoo account, I suggest getting a more reliable provider. Yahoo offer4b a mail service that they actively restrict depending on the size of the store of messages stored there. Any folder over 10,000 messages will not synchronize and any account over 15Gb will be prone to active Yahoo restrictions on bandwidth and synchronization among other things. Yahoo simply do not document most of their restrictions aimed at driving sales of paid accounts. I have wasted days on yahoo winch they started this latest round of changes in June. Their documentation leaves much to be desired and they appear to actively encourage Chinese whispers instead of offering support.
Matt, I appreciate your input. I did temporarily turn off my antivirus and firewall, and the emails still didn't transfer between Yahoo and Thunderbird. It wasn't until I removed the USPS tracking email that the other emails went through....until the next USPS tracking email. After figuring out USPS Tracking was the issue, I added USPS as an exception in TB and Yahoo, and they still wouldn't transfer. So, I suspect the link embedded in a USPS tracking email sets off Yahoo or TB's security that disallows that email, and anything dated after it, from transferring. Some emails that were dated after the USPS tracking email contained links within the email but they transferred fine between Yahoo and TB. Others on this thread also confirmed their emails transferred fine between Yahoo and TB after they removed the USPS tracking email. I believe one person still had problems with emails transferring, but suspect it's due to another link within an email. However, they said they created a new second inbox and copied everything into the second inbox and then created a second inbox in TB, and everything went through fine. So, it's still a mystery. BUT, turning off one's email antivirus permanently is risky. It leaves one vulnerable to email malware, spam, and viruses. The better way to deal with this is to turn off USPS tracking notices via email and turn on USPS tracking notice via Text.
Ezalaki modifié na geeproperties
You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.