Thunderbird Support Forum

I love Thunderbird and it has replaced Outlook (classic) for me, but there's one feature I miss, AutoArchive.

In Outlook (classic), emails older than x days can be automatically moved out of the server folders and into local folders, freeing up server storage space and negating the need to pay for additional cloud storage.

Thunderbird has the ability to select a group of messages in any folder and right-click > Archive (move) them to the matching Local Folder: perfect! But manually selecting multiple messages older than x days in multiple IMAP folders and selecting "Archive" is a chore too far.

Thunderbird should natively have the ability to (optionally) iterate across all IMAP folders and "Archive" any message older than x days, according to the Message Archives setting in Account Settings > Copies & Folders. The Disk Space setting in Account Settings could be an ideal place to add an "Archive messages more than x days old" option, since it already has a "Delete messages more than x days old" option.

Note: I know about the AutoarchiveReloaded add-on, but for something as important as shifting emails around with the possible breakage that could occur, and the possibility of the add-on being discontinued, native support would be very much welcome.

Another note: this has of course been raised on bugzilla,[1] but it's a 15 year old bug and seemingly unlikely to come to fruition.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=536169

Using Thunderbird version 115.11.0 (64-bit) with Windows 7 OS and THREADING TURNED OFF.

When I receive a second reply to an email I've sent via one of my email service providers that uses an outlook365 server, my thunderbird view hides it beneath the first reply unless I manually intervene by clicking on the "greater than" sign associated with the first reply. When I do click on the first reply the greater than sign spins clockwise 90 degrees and the second reply appears below the first as if it were in a subdirectory.

The above behaviour is very inconvenient because I am prone to missing the second reply and have trouble anticipating its existence. Admittedly the unread second reply does change the first reply's text property to "bold" but I much prefer to see the new message without having to manually click on everything bold to check.

Another email service provider I use also has an Outlook365 server but second replies to emails are not hidden in its associated thunderbird inbox?

Can anything be done in thunderbird to stop this "feature" or is it absolutely fixed by service providers?

We had a storm and now email doesn't work. We are a business and have to have email. I've went in and changed the Mozilla password and when go back to email it won't accept it. Emails aren't coming through. Can't sign in. What do I do?

I have over 35 email accounts, which I use Thunderbird to collect. Love Thunderbird for well over 2 decades!

I am wanting to have 2 of my email addresses to be downloaded before all the others. I have indeed successfully "moved" these 2 accounts to the top of my account list (Shift and mouse). However they are not downloaded in the order of the account list.

How do I accomplish this? Is it possible?

I created a ticket, and it auto-responded to run this by the Volunteer Community. I really want this to be handled by support, but welcome anyone to give me a solid answer.

Mark Robbins

Right now I'm using 3 different email accounts on Thunderbird. All 3 of them are Office365 accounts. For some reason, 1 of the 3 accounts is prompted at least once a day, sometimes twice a day, to enter my password on the Office365 website popup that is used with the OAuth2 authentication process. It's very irritating, all 3 accounts are Microsoft Office business accounts. What would be the reason why it needs to authenticate daily? Is there no password manager to do this automatically once it's been entered once? Can I pick a different authentication method? What is the correct change to make so I don't have to keep typing in my password every day?

"Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the fle system allows you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."

After years of working fine, this message has started appearing whenever TB tries to retrieve messages. I've checked that there's enough space (there's many GB free). I've checked the authorisations of the email folders, they're all fine (Full Control in all cases). I found an answer in a forum suggesting that a rogue antivirus might be the problem, but I'm only using MS Defender.

In desperation I removed the entire Roaming/Thunderbird folder, uninstalled TB, reinstalled it (version 115.12.2), created a new profile for my email address (it's a Yahoo email address, and I can retrieve the emails directly through the Yahoo Mail website with no problems). But I'm still getting the same error message. TB tries to retrieve the messages, it says 'Retrieving message 1 of 105' for several minutes, then the error message popup, and nothing appears in the Inbox. (105 is all the incoming messages as of now since this started happening).

I'm completely stuck. Any suggestions?

When I wanted to add a new subfolder to an existing folder, I think I used to right click on the folder under which I wanted to create a new subfolder. A menu would pop up with a line about adding a new subfolder. Now that option no longer appears. What happened, and how can I fix this, or how do I add a subfolder now?

Michael Tad Parks+, SSC 70741.2122@compuserve.com

Hi There,

After installing the new thunderbird release 15.12.2, i started getting alot of duplicates. i was messing around in the thunderbird layout etc There was a report about a damaged mailbox, but not the inbox. i think i was behind on compacting. Then i realized most of inbox was gone !

i tried the repair suggested in Thunderbird properties on the message summary index file .msf when i first noticed problem, i made copies both inbox and .msf currently:

Inbox itself is ~2Gb, but  Inbox.msf file size is 0 

i have copy of the Inbox, but copy of Inbox.msf is gone...

i reinstalled the latest thunderbird. but didn't help.

I took the advice of @Toad-Hall and uninstalled the flatpak version of thunderbird, then installed the version available as an rpm via dnf/yum and that worked. Life is good.

i'm running windows on a bootcamped macbook pro, windows 10 home. did i install correct version ? any other ideas ?

i have used thunderbird for many years and appreciate you'all for keeping it going !

thanks, Kathy

I don't know my password to open my email, how do I find it? I have had my email account for years never needed to sign in and now I'm out, I need help I have a lot of important messages waiting.

I've noticed that contacts disappear from my address book. On checking it seems Thunderbird is automatically deleting them!

This is unwanted behaviour.

I need it stopped.

tnx.

On Mac Sonoma 14.4, Thunderbird 115.12.2

When I try add my Gmail account or calendar account, the Gmail sign-in prompt page comes up but is entirely blank and does not load. When I restart my laptop I can sometimes get the page to load but when I allow my account to be connected, the next page does not load still. So the authentication process does not finish. The result is the same whether I enter my password on Thunderbird or not.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Thunderbird, and downgraded to an older version. Same issue.

I am not sure if it is a Mac issue but I am only having the issue with Thunderbird.

I've noticed recently that addresses that were in my personal address book have disappeared, basically they've been deleted. This next bit is from memory so excuse the vagueness. The last time I looked for these I found them in a bin marked as "deleted by thunderbird".

What is going on?

I need these addresses back.

i have 2 desk top windows 10 comps and an ipad and i phone which all share the same email address. 1 comp works fine, the other desktop and ipad will send emails but not receive them, the iphone can send emails and sometimes receives them but not all the time. IMAP port 993 and ssl/tls with normal password. Disabling Avast anti virus did not fix it. any ideas?

On powering up my PC this morning, opened Thunderbird and everything was gone - email settings to my various accounts, settings, calendar, addresses etc nothing is left at all

All I have is a basic screen : "To set up your existing email address" etc

Compact folders: caused a saved draft email to disappear. Closing and re-opening Thunderbird resolves this. Suggest the help document https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compacting-folders-potential-complications be updated to advise this solution (before the user raises an issue). How does this message get to someone who can action this?

I recently got a new PC with WINDOWS 10 and loaded Thunderbird to pick up my email. However, now the mail client keeps making new profile folders, which I keep trying to delete. I am up to 6 now. THey are all in my deleted section of my Local Folders. How do I remove them for good. I thought all deleted items were supposed to disappear once you close the program, no? I never had to even deal with Profile Folders on my older PC. Thank oyu for your assistance.

Hi All my emails from before February 2023 have disappeared. I live in Australia my server is Telstra who informed me that it isn’t their fault and that I should contact you. Many thanks Bee

Every time I open up Thunderbird a tab opens up containing a Thunderbird Privacy Notice. As I'm working then every so often a number tab opens with the same information. If I'm in Thunderbird for long I can have a dozen on more identical tabs. How do I stop this?