Thunderbird Community Forum

hello,

i am trying a second time to submit my question:

how can i migrate 3 months of prior thunderbird emails from a docked ssd to the ssd installed in my computer. please see attached photo.

the migration must be done without creating duplicate emails for the months of January 2025 through August 2025. more importantly, i don't want to disturb or lose the emails of December 2025 and January 2026 that are now on my computer. so my simplistic analysis is that i have to be able to move hand-selected emails from the docked SSD to the SSD installed in my computer. otherwise if i move an entire profile, it will erase my current profile that includes December and January emails.

thank you

I am running Thunderbird version 128.11.0esr (64 bits) on Windows 10 Pro. I have defined, in Windows, the default program for .doc and .docx files to be LibreOffice Writer and this works fine when I click on such a file in Windows.

But when I got a docx attachment in a Thunderbird email, and clicked on it, nothing happened. When I right-click on it, it just offers to open (not to select which program to open it with). I have to save the file locally, and click on it in Windows in order to open it.

This is very frustrating, all the more so that it used to work. I tried adding the two following lines to the prefs.js file, to no avail - no change:

user_pref("network.mime-handler.external.application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document", "D:\\Program Files\\LibreOffice\\program\\swriter.exe"); user_pref("network.mime-handler.external.application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document.useSystemDefault", false);

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Hello:

I am unable to send email messages to any "@zianet.com" email accounts (New Mexico). I can receive Zianet email messages, but I cannot Send or Reply. Zianet says they recognize the Earthlink IP Address, but that there is a third sender's IP Address they don't recognize. Earthlink says they have given Zianet the IP addresses. Does Mozilla Thunderbird have a third IP Address I can share with Zianet Tech Support? Zianet's phone number here in Las Cruces, New Mexico is: 1.575.353.1234. This issue is causing a lot of problems for me and my business. Thank you so much.

Here is the error message:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:

Server "zianet.com" returned an error:

* [hpollard@zianet.com]: message reached max retries

Authentication-Results: earthlink-vadesecure.net; auth=pass smtp.auth=jeanfulton@earthlink.net smtp.mailfrom=jeanfulton@earthlink.net; Received: from [192.168.10.102] ([67.143.180.56]) by vsel1nmtao01p.internal.vadesecure.com with ngmta id 48c82eca-188a1cab439a7dda; Mon, 12 Jan 2026 22:35:32 +0000 Message-ID: <35210bba-27ea-40e6-858d-5d16b6b6d300@earthlink.net>

In the upper right hand corner there should be a minus sign, restore/down sign and an X. Instead of these I have what looks like an X in a box. It appears to be fixed when I run in Trouble mode. Even the default theme shows it wrong. This just began happening. Thanks to anyone who can help me out.

If I begin typing while before I begin a new message, sometimes a message will disappear and I can never find it again. For example an "A" will move it to the archives. But whatever letter I press, the message disappears. It's not in archives and not in trash. How do I find it again?

I believe that version 145.0, newly installed on the 9th December, 2025 was showing server folders correctly; the server folder name matched the client folder name.

After upgrading to 146.0 on the 10th December, the server folder names for some folders are displaying with different client folder names.

The IMAP account has both "spam" and "junk" folders, Thunderbird is now displaying both as "Spam", you can only determine which folder is which by showing folder properties. It appears to users that there are two "Spam" folders now and not the two distinct folders with their own names.

Similar behaviour is happening for "Sent" and "Sent Messages" folders, both now display as "Sent".

These changes are confusing, the client sees two "Spam" folders and two "Sent" folders instead of the original proper server folder names.

Why has the display name for these folders changed?

How can I get TB to display the real underlying folder names?

Hello everybody. Since today or yesterday, my Thunderbird has stopped refreshing the list of messages. The number of new/unread messages in the Inbox and other folders is shown and updated right but the main window with the list of the messages does not get refreshed and only shows the last message from couple days ago.

I've tried to follow a bunch of guides and ideas (repairing folder, deleting .msf files...) and even removed the account and tried adding it again. The list of folders is right but now there are no messages at all. All folders look empty.

I've found out that in the folder on the disc where there are supposed to be the "INBOX.msf" and "INBOX" files, that the "INBOX" file without the file type is missing. And it's the same with every message folder, there are only .msf files on my PC where I removed and re-added the account. On my laptop, the "INBOX" file still exists but does not get updated.

This thing is happening with only one of my e-mail accounts, the others get updated fine and new messages are shown. It is IMAP server, imap.atlas.cz, Port 993, SSL/TLS with a password.

Can anyone help please?

Several days ago we inadvertently deleted batches of emails from our two Thunderbird Gmail accounts on our PC and Apple devices. The lost emails were duly recovered but only after having to change my Google password. However one of our Thunderbird Gmail account will not download any new messages coming in. Ultimately we deleted that account from Thunderbird, intending to reinstall it. We deleted the account by pressing the Red button in account settings. We confirmed that messages are received to Gmail's Web page Inbox Now when I attempt to reinstall the account and press Add Account, I get the UNABLE TO LOG IN AT SERVER MESSAGE shown below. The "Your Full Name" I am putting in is the name on the Google account deleted from Thunderbird, and the password I have tried is my new Google password. I have tried the process of not adding in the password until requested to do so but this did not work either. Any suggestions please?

Bonjour, Depuis le 13 janvier 2026, tous les mails que je reçois vont directement dans le fichier "Quarantaine". Je ne reçois plus aucun mail dans la boite de réception ?! Je suis désemparé car je n'ai pas le souvenir d'avoir réalisé une action particulière de paramétrage. Cordialement Gérard Caparros somedex@sfr.fr

Is there anyway of completely installing Thunberbird on a different drive and not have any stuff including symlinks in the users home directory?

Installing Thunderbird on a different drive/location is documented and straight forward but it insists on putting stuff in the users home directory C:\Users\<user>\AppData\ .

The problem can be fixed by using copying everything Thunderbird related in the C:\Users\<user>\AppData\ to the other drive and use symlinks from C:\Users\<user>\AppData\ directory to its new location. Thunderbird seems to be ok with symlinks.

Around Jan. 4, I tried moving all of my Inbox contents to a new subfolder "Inbox 2025". This process was taking a long time and I didn't see it complete. Afterwards, I can start Thunderbird OK (version 115.3.1 (64-bit) running on a Windows 10 system). I see the new folder "Inbox 2025" and it seems complete. I also see other folders which look OK. But the incoming messages have frozen at 01/01/26 [for one e-mail account] and at 01/04/26 [for a second e-mail account.]

It is also true that all of my Thunderbird sessions end by crashing after a certain period of time. What can I do to restart Thunderbird so that it will connect with the relevant servers, get new messages and not crash?

Hello, In a recent upgrade to Thunderbird Mac OS x146.0.1 (aarch64), the FILTER selection options on some drop down menus are now blank. Example: "Priority" "Status"

These drop down menus now show no options (eg. read,)

I've two screen shots to illustrate.

Thanks for looking into this.

Glenn S

I use Thunderbird 115.18.0 on a Windows 7 machine. I wish to transfer all my Thunderbird data to a machine running Linux Mint 21.3 which has Thunderbird 128.12.0esr. I have not been successful after many tries. Could this be because the Thunderbird revisions are different? If so, can I get 115.18.0 to install on my Mint machine? If not how should I proceed? I have already tried creating a new .thunderbird directory with ********.default directory from the other machine. I have also tried a new .thunderbird directory with a the ********default-release directory as directed by one site.

I have a set of e-mails that I am unable to delete or move - when i try they disappear for a few seconds and then re-appear. They all contain a red bold warning "Caution external e-mail"

Hello! I want to set up TBird to: 1) Get all my messages and attachments stored locally, and... 2) Remove *most* of the above from gmail's server to avoid the data limit, but... 3) Keep, perhaps some months or a year of activity on gmail's server so I can access recent items from wherever.

Questions: 1) I have 10s of thousands (more?) of msgs, many with attachments. Is it better to just set up TBIrd and let it grab all the messages, or start by using Google TakeOut? 2) I presume I use IMAP vs. POP? 3) To preserve messages on my harddrive, I could archive to a local folder. Then I could safely delete those same messages on the gmail web interface? 4) If this turns into a disaster, can I just remove the entire account from TBird without suffering a loss of my entire email history? 5) Any insurance maneuvers to prevent the disaster of accidentally losing my entire email history while attempting to set this up? (Obviously will need to be religious about backing up my own system, though keeping a year of email on the gmail server offers a bit of insurance once the set up is successful.)

I am really hoping to avoid creating a unholy mess of my email/spending a week trying to fix it. (Indeed, I have avoided this project for years for this reason, but I really, really want to do this.)

Currently using Thunderbird 147.0 (64 bit)

What I want to do is move messages between folders and subfolders without triggering automatic downloads. In this case, I want the folders to be local only and not saved on the server.

When I moved messages as described, they first seem like they are moving okay. My target folder shows the correct number and the source folder appears empty. Then, the messages re-appear in the source folder. The target folder still shows all the messages but if I repair it to ensure it is okay, it gets reduced. Only some of the messages are moved. No warnings are given that repairing it would cause a problem. Since this is a local action would I would expect it to be relatively quick. This also triggers a download from the server to the source folder every time something is moved.

I have tried changing synchronization options to offline but that doesn't have any effect. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, along with the explanation of what may be causing this behavior.