Komunitné fórum Thunderbird

Why did retrieving messages suddenly stop. It was working yesterday and I made no changes to anything. I can send successfully. I am using Shaw/Rogers Pop server.

Why does "test connection to server" fail?

A search showed that others have experienced this same error message, but as far as I can tell, they all were unable to access their email. These messages began appearing about a month ago. They pop up in Troubleshooting Mode. They did not in Windows Safe Mode. AVG and ZoneAlarm are not the culprits.

I have been using Thunderbird for quite a few years and all of the sudden I have been receiving the message below yesterday and it's still continuing with this error:

Connection to sever imap.gmail.com timed out

I have not changed any settings Tried all the different suggestions found online (checking port numbers, taking off anti virus, worked in troubleshoot mode, even un-installed Thunderbird and then re-installed, etc)

The problem is still happening. Not sure if anything was changed on the back end of Thunderbird but I cannot receive or send emails at this point.

Please advise. Thanks!

This just started 4 or 5 days ago ( 2026.1.23 ish). I did not update TB nor make any changes to the account in question (that I'm aware of). The errors show up every few minutes, with a 'beep' sound and notification pop-up showing up each time - is very annoying.

I was running v145 when it started. I saw there was an update to 147 and installed that; same issue. I restarted TB into Troubleshooting mode and am still getting the error.

This is running on MacOS 15.7.3. Hardware is MacMini (2024) with Apple M4 chip.

Generally I still seem able to received & send emails.

I opened Activity Manager and Error Console. Error console doesn't seem to have much (using 'Multiprocess', with Errors, Warnings, Logs, Debug enabled). Activity manager shows things such as:

<my account name>

   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    09:49
   Failed to connect to server outlook.office365.com.    09:52
   Authentication failure while connecting to server outlook.office365.com.    09:58
   Authentication failure while connecting to server outlook.office365.com.    10:03
   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    10:10
   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    10:14
   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    10:20

There was an error or log entry that I was able to find a few days ago that made me think it was Calendar related, but now I'm not finding that message.

My Thunderbird will not connect to the Comcast/Xfinity email account with the same settings that Outlook connected to and downloaded all my emails and my inbox structure. I believe this is either a battle between Comcast and Thunderbird or a big glitch in this application, My Gmail, Outlook365, work fine in Thunderbird, not Comcast. This started about a week ago. Has anyone found a solution?

When in e-mail I get a message concerning not being able to connect I MAP settings as there are too many or something like that. (Message disapears quickly). It indicating that I should use advanced I MAP settings - all of which is way beyong my primative knowledge. Anyone throw any light on this regarding what and how to do or who to contact Thank you . Bernard

I have two accounts hooked to thunderbird, my work account that uses google workspace and my personal gmail account. Today, my work account went totally crazy, and it's loading emails in my inbox at a snails pace. Meanwhile, my personal gmail account loads fine. I did literally everything. I deleted and restored the accounts, then I deleted the Thunderbird app and all the library folders on my mac that had thunderbird (maybe I missed some?) Then I reinstalled Thunderbird and connected everything again. Same result. Personal Gmail imap works great. Work gmail with google workspace is incredibly slow and won't load in my inbox.

Before reinstalling i did everything, cleared cache, compacted folders, changed to not have messages stored locally. What could I be doing? Is google workspace imap having trouble?

I installed the latest Thunderbird version last week, is this a version update problem? After a full reinstall of everything, I'm totally confused now. I've gone through my settings 10 times and spent 8 hours on this today. I used chatgpt to guide me and try different things. I'm stumped, please help. I'm a donor that supports Thunderbird!!! I've used it since 2008. 147.0.1 (aarch64) Release notes

Greetings.

For many years I have used Thunderbird to send and receive mail through my Outlook account (while happily donating to Mozilla).

A few months ago, every initial attempt to send a message abruptly started to fail, generating the dreaded notice that “the message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) smtp-mail.outlook.com timed out.”

What is odd is that if I keep trying to send, the message always goes out eventually -- sometimes after only two tries, sometimes after ten tries.

Thus, my Outlook account works, my Thunderbird settings work, the SMTP server works -- but only at random intervals.

The problem has continued through several Thunderbird updates, including the current one (147.0.1). I tried changing the server to smtp.office365.com and got the same performance.

I am on MacOS 15.4 and am not running any third-party antivirus or firewall product.

My thanks to anyone who has insight into this problem.

Hi,

I had to re-install Thunderbird on my computer. I had it all working until Jan. 27th when all of the sudden most of my email accounts started giving a timeout error message. I have tried numerous setting changes and combinations, rechecked by passwords and even tried uninstalling and reinstalling again. Nothing is working. The accounts affected are gmail, yahoo, and aol accounts. I shut off my anti-virus software, and okayed thunderbird for accessing these accounts. Not sure what else to try, so thinking maybe it was a change with the mail servers and how they let thunderbird access them. Are they now denying the use of third party servers.

Thunderbird has worked great for a couple of years. Recently, I kept getting the “Retry” prompt...sometimes two or three times before it would download my email from the server (windstream.net). Now I get nothing. It still goes through the "connecting...blah blah blah but nothing happens. Going to the windstream.net site works but sucks. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

TBird Version: 140.7.1esr

Since yesterday I can no longer click through with hyperlinks inside an email message.

I don't understand this.

I have already tried all the troubleshooting items to no avail.

To my mind, a change was made to TBird's functionality and this is stopping the click-through to the default browser and the opening of the page linked.

Since we needed to upgrade 2 PCs to Windows 11 (1x Pro & 1x Home) nothing works anymore with Thunderbird. It has MASSIVE and unsolvable problems to connect to our Gmail account via OAuth, Not only will it ask every single time again and over again to allow the connection, but moreover even after granting access it still can NOT send (SMTP) or save or even receive (IMAP) emails. It is maga frustrating and I am currently after days and days spend to unsuccessful fix the problem are at the point to looks for a more reliable alternative (if there is any). Just as background: Our Gmail account is about 14GB big, the local Thunderbird folder around 100GB; so yes it's big, but that's another problem, there are no easy or straightforward off-line archivers any longer to effectively and still easy accessible reduce the local archive.

My Spectrum-TB connect was functional yesterday but is not working today; NO password or setting changes! Contacted Spectrum and was able to successful send an email from Spectrum's online webmail to a gmail account.

Thunderbird is reporting error "could not connect to server . . . the connection was refused." However, it seems that it reports this error only when there is no new incoming message. And it does not happen consistently.

Thunderbird is version 147.0. Operating system is the current version of Windows 11 on an HP desktop workstation, new 4 months ago.

I have 4 email accounts set up in Thunderbird. Server settings for the accounts are set to check for new messages at startup and at intervals of 5 to 10 minutes depending on the account and to automatically download new messages. I have confirmed the server settings for the accounts match the settings specified by the ISP. When there is a new message to be downloaded it seems that it does, in fact, connect automatically to the server and download when Thunderbird does its check for new messages at startup or specified intervals.

When I have open the Inbox for an account and click on the "Get Messages" icon or right-click on the account name and then click on "Get Messages" I usually promptly see at the bottom of the window the messages "Host contacted . . . sending login information . . . Checking inbox for new messages . . . there are no new messages to download." That is true even if I do that within seconds of receiving the "could not connect" error. But sometimes there is a delay of many seconds before the "host contacted . . ." message, and occasionally I never get that response to the click to get messages. When I click to "get messages" I never see the "could not connect" error even if the "host contacted" message does not appear.

I have set to show an alert and play a sound when new messages arrive. The same sound is played when the "could not connect to server . . ." error is displayed. The result is the sound may be played every 5-10 minutes. I can tell that this issue does not happen consistently because I might go for several hours, or even all day, without the sound and without the error message. The occurrence or absence of the error seems to be completely random and unrelated to what I may have open on the computer.

Since I do seem to be receiving messages without a delay in delivery this is perhaps no more than an annoyance, but I would prefer to avoid the annoyance. This is not happening on other computers here which are using Thunderbird.

Good day,

On one of several computers we use to access email when we try to 'Get Messages' Thunderbird doesn't even attempt to connect to the mail server on two of the accounts set up. All four other computers access the servers just fine. In trying to resolve the issue on the recalcitrant computer I created a new email account with the host and added it to Thunderbird using the 'Add Account' wizard, and changed IMAP to POP3. Once the account was created it logged in and received the 'settings' email from the host, and I was able to send an email to another account. I could see the activity reports for the new account in the status bar. However no reports on the status bar for the original two accounts. I've triple checked port settings etc and up until a few days ago Thunderbird worked just fine on this machine. No changes have been made to the original settings. Prior to adding the new account, when asking to get messages the only report on the status bar was 'Done' without any information reported about contacting, downloading etc. The Done message showed up immediately upon clicking the Get Messages button.

Adding the new account and it working properly tells me my settings are correct and the install of Thunderbird is working. Thank you in advance for your suggestions.

John

I have Thunderbird on my Omen 35L on Win 11. Thunderbird CANNOT CONNECT to Comcast to send an email. This was not a problem on Win10. I have done ALL the settings fixes and NOTHING WORKS. Other mail provider accounts send OK (e.g. Site Ground). This is unique to Win 11 and Comcast.