have you tried clicking on the save password in the dialog asking for the password?

Matt said

have you tried clicking on the save password in the dialog asking for the password?

No. I assumed that doing this would mean that I didn't need to enter a password at all, which is not what I want. Before changing PC I used to log on once with my password for each session. This is what I hope to achieve again.

You receive email from a POP or IMAP server. Your send email through the SMTP server. If you want to manually enter passwords you have to login to each server when you use them. That is how it works.

I assume your asking about the master password feature and not about account passwords at all.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/master-password Just not that pressing esc bypassed the password prompt because it is a password used to encrypt all your other passwords. Not an access to the program password.

Matt said

I assume your asking about the master password feature and not about account passwords at all. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/master-password Just not that pressing esc bypassed the password prompt because it is a password used to encrypt all your other passwords. Not an access to the program password.

I am not sure where the problem is. I have a master password and I am pretty sure I told TB my email account password when I downloaded TB; in fact I must have entered it because I can read my emails via TB.

The message I get when I try to send an email (after having read emails) is "SMTP server password required. Enter your password for ????@gmx.co.uk on mail.gmx.com" Does this information help pin down the problem?