Two Giant Steps Backwards one small step forwards.
I keep Thunderbird running on a Windows 10 Computer 24x7. I have the update function set to ask. I woke up yesterday morning only to find that Thunderbird had upgraded to 78.4.0 from 68.9 without me telling it I wanted to upgrade. Now for the first time in the history of Thunderbird -- been using it since version 1 -- I cannot go back to a previous version without creating a new profile - Giant Step Backwards.
I lost several extensions that I use -- Second Giant Step Backwards -- and the reason I didn't want to upgrade. Extensions say that they are active. 1) gContactSync (I have emailed the developer over this one and as of yet haven't received a reply) I have found another extension that does something similar called TbSync. 2) Filter Button which adds a button to the message header view toolbar. Which I used everyday to move read messages around. Says it is active however Thunderbird 78 doesn't have any customization so the order of my buttons was reset. This is actual a third Giant Step Backwards. I saw a post where there was a bug report on this Bug 1556261 posted over a year ago with at least 8 duplicates. It has never been assigned.
Bottomline is that Thunderbird 6.9 should not have updated to version 78.4.0. I filed a bug report on this.
The small step forward is the UI is cleaner however Dark Theme doesn't totally work as Activity Manager doesn't honor the Dark Theme.
Wish I could go back to 68.
All Replies (5)
Are you sure there isn't some other app that forced the TB update? There have been many reports of some security apps with 'updater' modules that override the TB update settings.
However, if you want to run TB 68 on a profile that has been opened in 78, first export your address books from 78, uninstall 78, install 68, don't run TB at the end of setup, start Profile Manager by opening a Run window with Windowskey+R, type
thunderbird.exe -p --allow-downgrade
select the relevant profile folder.
yes, tbsync is compatible with 78.
I can confirm that activity manager doesn't do dark mode.
Wayne Mery said
yes, tbsync is compatible with 78. Was using gContactSync not tbsync which shows up active however does nothing and if I switch to a new profile, I cannot install it. gContactSync, which in my opinion is better as with tbsync I now have 2 address books with the same info in them. Plus tbsync freezes Thunderbird while syncing -- currently have over 5300 contacts. gContactSync will also sync the labels. Syncing the complete Google address book is import to me as it allows me to have the same address book on my Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G as I have on my preferred email client as I have been using it since version 1.0 launched back in December of 2004 was using Firefox when the email client that became Thunderbird was a part of Firefox. George
sfhowes said
Are you sure there isn't some other app that forced the TB update? There have been many reports of some security apps with 'updater' modules that override the TB update settings.
The answer to this is I don't use any app to auto-update any of my installed apps. I like to be in full control of when something updates as I have been burned many times. When I do update apps, I do a full backup of everything in my %userprofile% directory. When I went to bed was running 68.9.0 when I woke-up launched Thunderbird as it wasn't running as it was when I went to bed. The first thing that came up was updating Thunderbird. Did a version check as extensions that I rely upon were no longer working. However they were not disabled
However, if you want to run TB 68 on a profile that has been opened in 78, first export your address books from 78, uninstall 78, install 68, don't run TB at the end of setup, start Profile Manager by opening a Run window with Windowskey+R, type thunderbird.exe -p --allow-downgrade select the relevant profile folder.
Thanks, this worked. In the long history of using Thunderbird, since December of 2004 [When I did an upgrade to my NAS Drive as the 20 year old drives were beginning to fail, I found a backup that I did of Thunderbird 1.0 from January 7, 2004, now using a Raspberry Pi solution], I have have never had to use the switch:
--allow-downgrade
as all I did was reinstall the previous version that I was running. However, I do have a short cut that I created on my Desktop and Start Menu to choose the profile as sometimes I will run the new version on a clean profile to see if I like the changes.
George
Thanks, George, for reporting this promptly so it was here when I needed it, and to sfhowes for clear instructions to recover.
It's simply not cool to not TELL your loyal users (in advance!) that you're about to make a change that stops all extensions from working, and modifies the profile to make it a pita to revert. ONLY THEN should it present an [OK to Upgrade?] button. Sure, it "only" took an hour or so to fix (including finding this page), but multiply that by HOW many installations?!
You guys work hard as volunteers, and I appreciate it. Some consideration is called for in return.