Thunderbird Community Forum

Hi, I have been running low on hard disk space due to the bloated Windows 11. I have been trying to clean up Thunderbird by deleting a bunch of saved emails and compacting, but the size of my profile folder is still about 3.5 GB. I looked at all of the subfolders under my profile and found a bunch of what I think is dead storage.

Under the MAIL folder there are 4 folders for what looks like my current Local Folders and 3 older local folders. Under the IMAPMAIL folder there are 4 folders for what looks like my 2 current email addresses and 2 older unused email addresses.

I looked under the account settings for the Local Folders and the 2 email addresses and have identified the 3 out of the 8 folders that are still being used.

So my question is, is it safe to just delete these apparently unused folders?

- Thunderbird set up 19/05 & email/ history /folders downloaded - Moved from DNS to GANDI Email server provider this week but now all folders/historic email are no longer visible in Thunderbird email - How do I get them back and how do I synchronise Thunderbird & Gandi so that emails shown in WEBMAIL include all History and not just new emails since Gandi switched on? Thank you.

Hello everyone,

I am hoping someone can help me recover some EXTREMELY important emails for a legal matter. I was trying to export an entire nested Gmail label (WORK/TNC/TNC DISPUTE) to PDF.

It's a lot of emails spanning from April 2024 that I had painstakingly been going through and labeling to get them ready to print to use as evidence for a work dispute. When faced with the task of having to print all those emails to pdf, one by one, I wanted to chew my own arm off!

I'm convinced there must be another way to bulk print to pdf......and so I went down a few rabbit holes in search of my quick fix.....(I'm not trying to be lazy, I just have very little time left to get this done, and right now I'm losing the will to live if my reality is that I will be busy with this till the end of time.)

I read different threads and questions over the internet and found information that led me to Thunderbird. (Hi, Thunderbird :). I know there are paid apps or extensions that can bulk print to pdf, but I unfortunately don't have the money to pay for them (i.e. the work dispute - salary has been frozen for over 2 years and resignation was denied, so no income and held hostage by my employer - the emails I have lost are literally my future!). Sorry, enough of the why.....

I DID THIS:

So I read that I need to to create a folder in Thunderbird's "Local Folders" with the same name, and simply drag and drop the label from the original label to the local folder label (I did all of this in Thunderbird.

Unfortunately, this went VERY wrong. At first it seemed like it was doing something, but it didn't really do anything that I am aware of.....There was nothing in the local folder I had created and dragged the label to, there was nothing in the original label folder (everything was empty). I died! Then comforted myself with the fact that it's still in GMAIL.....that was the naive, optimistic me talking..... Headed over to Gmail, saw my label name, sigh of relief, clicked on the label name.....DIED 10000000000000 x over.......I continued to cry for the next 4 hours...

.That was the 12th of June.....I'm still trying to get them back.....I have been able to find a few bits of info here and there.....I just don't know how to get them back into Gmail for me to never try be so foolish again!!! (Until someone maybe shows me how to bulk print to PDF?????)....

Here is the current situation and the technical details of what I've found so far:

What happened:

Thunderbird executed a "Move" command instead of a "Copy".

The TNC DISPUTE label is in my Gmail web interface (the emails are not in the label, nor the the Trash and none of my settings anywhere are set to delete permanently etc., on exit).

The Local Folder in Thunderbird shows up on my screen, but it is completely empty.

What I have discovered in the background:

Account Type: IMAP connected to Gmail (*********@gmail.com). (i've replaced my email address name with stars to not put my private email on a public site)

The Local Files: I found the tracking path imap://**********%40gmail.com@imap.gmail.com/WORK/TNC/TNC DISPUTE. I also found the raw file directories containing TNC DISPUTE (no extension) and the TNC DISPUTE.msf index file.

The roadblock I am hitting:

I read that deleting the corrupted .msf index file while Thunderbird is closed will force it to rebuild the index and potentially reveal the emails. However, at first I couldn't safely get into the folder to do this:

When I clicked "Open Folder" from Help > More Troubleshooting Information, Windows threw an error: "Explorer.EXE - There was a problem sending the command to the program."

When I try to bypassed Thunderbird and use the Windows Run dialog with %appdata%\Thunderbird\Profiles, Windows threw another path error and refused to open it.

I ended up reinstalling Thunderbird and it fixed the access profile issue and I can now access where the data gets saved from Thunderbird.....

I just don't know what to do from here to get my (previously local foldered misshaped moved) folder back in my Gmail. (safely - to not corrupt everything or worse....delete it permanently.....)

The details of the missing emails (contents of the label that did copy to the local drive I think):

Directory Contents (as shown in the attached image)

1. TNC DISPUTE.sbd

• Type: File folder

• Date modified: 19 Jun 2026, 00:55

2. msgFilterRules.dat

• Type: DAT file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 05:49

• Size: 0 KB

3. TNC DISPUTE

• Type: File

• Date modified: 19 Jun 2026, 05:55

• Size: 670,605 KB

4. TNC DISPUTE.msf

• Type: MSF file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 22:31

• Size: 3 KB

5. Trash

• Type: File

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 05:48

• Size: 0 KB

6. Trash.msf

• Type: MSF file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 06:27

• Size: 2 KB

7. Unsent Messages

• Type: File

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 05:48

• Size: 0 KB

8. Unsent Messages.msf

• Type: MSF file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 06:24

• Size: 2 KB

Sorry for the long post, hopefully someone can help me go back in time and have my only issue be searching for ways to bulk print to pdf and not having to try restore the only emails that are actually worth being on there.

TIA xxx Margz

Google sent me an alert about my password being compromised. I changed it. It works everywhere except Thunderbird. I've been trying over and over to update the password with no luck. I keep getting the sign in popup and that results in a 400 error message - "The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That’s all we know." I opened Saved Passwords (named Saved loging in the new popup) and I deleted all the old passwords as one of the articles said to do to get started. So far I haven't found anywhere to enter my new password to open the gmail account. I've been at this for well over an hour trying all kinds of possibilities with no success. Suggestions?

7-1-26: Problem when I updated/downloaded Thunderbird 152.0.1. When I try to open, a dialog box asks if I want to create a new profile. By mistake I clicked the "new profile button" but didn't create a new profile since I want to use my previous profile just as with past upgrades. However, I couldn't move past that screen so I closed Thunderbird. Then when I try to re-open Thunderbird, I get that same dialog box and can't move forward. What can I do? Your assistance is truly appreciated, Rick

for some reason emails move from inbox to trash by themselves. I have posted this before and did not get any help to fix this. Has anyone else had this problem. I am not very computer savvy so please if you can explain in plain language. Very frustrating. Thanks ahead of time

It's very odd. Normally moving an email, say from the Inbox to the relevant year's archive, takes "no time at all".

Which is true for all the mailboxes shown on the attached screenshot, EXCEPT for the four at the bottom. Moving even one message from Inbox to Yiddish can take ten seconds or longer (with the dreaded "Not Responding" occasionally). Moving something in the opposite direction is also screwy, only from those four.

I had thought that it was because they're rather large. This first started when there were just Yiddish and MSW, and I split off most of the earlier years into the archives shown. To no avail.

It's only an annoyance, but I'm puzzled about how such a thing could happen.

Also very slow tagging or untagging a message just in those mailboxes.

I currently have the following:

Mozilla Thunderbird version 152.0.1 (64-bit) installed on a Windows 11 Pro computer. Within this installation are five E-Mail accounts configured and working.

I have selected Export for Mobile.

On Android (Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra - 5G) One UI Version: 8.5 Android: 16 Kernel: 6.1.145-android14-11-33419968-abS928USQS6DZF2

Thunderbird Version: 20.0

I click on the Import Settings: Try to scan the QR Code from my laptop which says 1 of 2 QR Codes and I get nothing. No pop-ups, no approvals, it just sits there. Clicking done takes me back to the main screen.

I would like to set up an existing Gmail account in Thunderbird.

The following window appears: (see Image 1)

I click the next button, and the next window is: (see Image 2).

How can I sign in to Google? Perhaps in a different way?

I'm a new Thunderbird user and my question is the simple one typed into the "Summarize your question" box. There doesn't seem to be an appropriate topic, so please excuse the "off-topic" topic.

TIA, Allen

My Message Source displays text in very large Liberation Mono. I can't find a setting anywhere, including Advanced Preferences. Where can I change that?

Liberation Mono is the font I have set for monospace in different languages. Since it is not the default, there may be a connection there.

Also, since yesterday when I reply to certain HTML messages, the font used for quoted text is again large size Liberation Mono. I haven't changed anything, so I suspect it's a bug in new 152.0.1.

After I open my Thunderbird email and use it for 15 to 20 minutes it freezes. I need to close it and I get a message Thunderbird is not responding. I then need to close the program using Microsoft to close the program.

Windooze 11. TBird 152.0 installed on June 20th. Now it seems like TBird is not displaying HTML emails properly. They are displayed but not at the beginning. The first line is sometimes just the bottom half of a sentence in the email (if that makes sense). I can't scroll back to the beginning. If I go to outlook and display the same email it displays fine.

Did something change in 152.0 to cause this?

Thanks, Ed Mazurek

I used to have Thunderbird on this laptop and was using Microsoft Office 365. I have since stopped using it from GoDaddy. I uninstalled the old Thunderbird and reinstalled a new version. I am trying to enter the new server settings but I keep getting the old Office 365 settings showing up. How do I get rid of that and find the new settings page to enter the new settings?

All my old email accounts are showing up and I only want to add 2 to the new Thunderbird. I thought uninstalling would delete all the old stuff. Please help.

When I replaced Outlook with Thunderbird, it was brilliant. It was so good, I chose to donate! Now it's changed. I was trying to find out why a forwarded email changed the body of the message to a HTML attachment. I stupidly followed a wrong AI help process and changed something I can't remember. Now all of my emails only show hyperlinks and not the pictures these hyperlinks point to. I would like the pictures back and the option to download these if these are safe in new emails. I've seached everywhere I thought I went but I can't find the setting that does this. Please help if you can.

My school email's storage and emails will expire end of today (June 30th, 11:59 PM EST). I accidentally thought the account would just be frozen at that time, but realized they would be deleting the account all together for universities alumni.

When I downloaded Thunderbird to transfer my emails, I'm logging in, but I'm getting prompted to log in to Microsoft rather than Gmail for some reason. The email should be Google Workspace. I'd love to know what's going on as I'm not sure and my school's IT support said it's a problem with Thunderbird as it should be gmail for me.

Anyone know of any fixes or suggestions?

GmailをIMAPで使用。 19000件ほどの「すべてのメール」を、17000件ほど「ローカルにアーカイブ」したところ、他のPCで見られなくなった。 IMAPでは削除扱いだろうが、Gmailでは自動削除オフ&アーカイブするという処理がされているはず。 実際Gmail上ではすべてのメールに残っているし、iPadの Gmailアプリでもすべて見ることができる。

復旧する方法はないか。ローカルにアーカイブしたメールは残っているものもあるが、残っていないものも一部ある。

以下、AIの回答

② 今回の問題の本体

あなたの現象の本質はこれです：

❗ Gmail IMAPの「分割レスポンス」＋クライアントの「完了判定」

⸻

Gmail側

• All Mailを一括で返さない
• チャンク（分割）で返す
• 順序は保証されない

⸻

At the beginning I see some message disappear (moved from inbox to the folder but never show in the folder) then following some advises I made a Repair Folder, then all messages in the folder disappear.

As you can see, on the gmail picture there is 114 emails in this folder, in the Thunderbird picture it count only 7 and display none.

Please any one have a solution ?

I'm working with Thunderbird 152.0 on linux (Manjaro GNOME). I've been having this issue where sometimes while composing a reply, the quoted text of the email I'm replying to in the body of my current reply will be displayed as black on the dark background. It's very annoying when I need to look at specific text to refer to in my message.

Some more observations: - This is not a new issue, it's been happening for quite a while now, possibly years, but it's finally gotten to a point where I want to fix it. - It does not always happen. I suspect it's when the original message I'm replying to has been formatted in html first, whereas I prefer plain text replies.

I've attached an image of what it can look like on my end, as well as one where I select the text to show the contents.

Is there anything that can be done about it?

Thunderbird is marking unread messages as read after about 5 minutes. I've tried changing settings by delaying or unticking automatically mark messages as read in the "reading & display area" and it's still marking messages after about 5 minutes to read when they haven't been opened. We are not using Bitdefender - I saw this was referred to in the help section and changes could be made to that to stop this happening but we are only using Microsoft defender. We are not using another device, ie phone or ipad to access emails on this account - just a PC We do have other email accounts running on different PC and none of those appear affected by this problem.