It's way too early in the day for the remedial highland scotch (sad to say), but I have entered the minefield of required provider settings. I thought I would start over with a new profile. Working through the panes (or do I mean pains?) I reach a screen that allows for such things as incoming / outgoing ports and settins. Depending on the thread from the provider's website there are several port settings: 110, 25,995,465, and they seem to depend (in TB) on certain options being chosen. For example, if I select ssl/tls TB overwrites my 110 port selection with 995. Regardless, with entries everywhere, I cannot get off the page because the Done button, whilst the word "done" is heavy and black, the button border is not, and the button will not operate. Ergo, I have missed something, but what? I don't want to create another account (shouldn't I be able to use an existing one?), and so eventually I kill the process and wish it were 6 pm already! I regret that a complete unfamiliarity with just about every term used in the world of e-mail is about as problematic as asking someone who has never heard of the word 'engine' to check the oil. So, I have no progress to report as yet, but maybe I'll feel like having another go at it tomorrow. What appears to be the approach (ultimately) is to delete all accounts and profiles, and start over with a clean sheet. That requires me to know exactly what Mediacom (the provider) wants to see. I have established that they do not use iMAP, and that POP3 is the magic code. The ports are all over the map (so to speak), but an old XP computer exists with TB on it that may provide all of the data, if we can live long enough to see it finish booting up. I'll be back in touch tomorrow. Many thanks again for your assistance and patience!

These are the Mediacom settings I found:

Mail Servers POP: mail.mediacombb.net SMTP: mail.mediacombb.net

Secure Server Ports POP: 995 SMTP: 465

Note that these are secure server settings so you do have to choose SSL/TLS in the connection security settings.

We have the correct settings for mchsi mail. We booted up our old XP machine which has Thunderbird 31.2 installed and it works well, so we double checked the settings. Upon reflection we realized the settings must be correct since we can receive mail and send out mail if we are replying to a received message. Since the new profile we created allows mail to be sent out, but does not have all the folders we have created in the Default profile is there any way to determine what is in the new profile that is different in the Default? The other thing that occurs with the Default profile is if we have invoked the address book on the left side of the screen, and we click on a contact and then "add to to", it does not put it in the To field, it just sets the cursor to the To field. Do you think this is a corrupt Default profile and if so how do we correct it.

I am going to assume that the 'default' profile is your old profile. And you should not be using that anymore. Theoretically, with a thorough examination, one should be able to figure out what is different between the new and old, but the reason we created the new profile is that the difference could be a very minor piece of code within thousands and thousands of pieces of code. And chances are that code is not easily accessible. That is why we go through the other steps first to try and determine if it can be easily (relatively speaking) corrected. I do believe that something was corrupted or re-set. What that is, I haven't a clue. If you wish, you can keep the profile and fiddle with it, but beware... if you don't know what you're doing, you may end up making things much worse. Remember, all code is connected. Change one thing, twenty or more other items will be effected. That's why we bypassed this and simply recreated the profile trusting that whatever glitch has been created will not be duplicated in a new profile. After all, the purpose is to get you up and running.

As for the folders, simply create them again. When you get things up and running, I would delete all the old profiles. As for your address book, you seem to be referring to a layout structure. If you double click on Address Book now, the window opens and you should be able to right click on it, which tells TB that you want to send a message to this individual. If you have multiple profiles, TB lists them when you right-click to provide you with an option to choose the profile from which you want to send the email. Try it.

An alternative is this add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/contacts-sidebar/?src=cb-dl-featured This seems to set up the contact list as you've had it. (I don't use it so I can't comment on it.)

Sooooo.... where are we at with your issues? What remains?

We thought that the solution would be to get rid of the old profile, but we have done a lot of "customization" of the folders, etc which required a lot of time. Is there anyway to copy the address book to move it to the new profile. Also, what about all the old emails in the old profile how will they transfer to the new profile? I guess we are concerned about losing information when we delete the old profile - are we missing the obvious?

I apologize. I thought I provided a link that covers that information in good detail. Here it is: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Thunderbird

Also, you may find this add-on helpful. However, the add-on does not seem to have great instructions so be certain to read through the above first so that you understand the steps. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

We have created a totally new profile and all seems to be well. The biggest annoyance is trying to get everything to look the way it did before. Most of the differences we have resolved, but one we cannot figure out. In the area where the folders are displayed (on the left hand side in a vertical column) the inbox displays all messages for the 5 email accounts which is great and is what we had before. However, in the Drafts folder the messages are not shown for all the email addresses - we have to click on each account individually. On our old profile this was not the case, how do we fix it? You have been incredibly helpful, and we hope you understand this question.

I think I understand what you're asking. Essentially, you want the drafts from all your email accounts to be in one Draft folder of one account. For the purpose of this post, we'll call this main email account the default account. This should work: 1. Go into VIEW ACCOUNT SETTINGS of one of your non-default accounts. 2. Click on COPIES AND FOLDERS from the left side of the window. 3. On the right side of the window box, the third section is called 'Drafts and Folders'. You will note that "Keep message drafts in drafts folder on" is selected, and the account in the textbox is your current account. Click on the textbox and select your DEFAULT account name. 4. Repeat for all your other non-default accounts.

Does that work?