Thunderbird Community Forum

Help, please! I have a twc.com account operating with Outlook 2007 on an old Dell Win7 laptop. It works great but too many websites refuse to recognize the Win7 machine, so I had to "upgrade". I just got a new Dell Win11 laptop and installed Spectrum email to access twc.com. So far, so good. But I need to access the hundreds of email files and folders from the old Outlook-based twc.com account. Can't export them to Spectrum.net as .pst because only Outlook recognizes that file extension. I do not want Office 365, so I tried installing Office 2024. But it's bundled with Office 365. I even installed an old version of Office 2010. When I tried to set up email with twc.com, I got a popup telling me that I had to get Office 365 to do this. Diabolical.

Enter Thunderbird. I downloaded and installed Tbird. I then attemped to use Tbird to be the client for twc.com. I've tried for several days with no success. First I had Tbird search for my twc.com account. Tbird said:

IMAP Incoming: IMAP, SSL/TLS mobile.charter.net Outgoing: SMTP, SSL/TLS mobile.charter.net Username: [edited]@twc.com

Results were quite different from what Spectrum had told me by phone (see below) but I tried this anyway. Got an error message: "Cannot find the server." etc.

So I tried manual setup using the information provided by Spectrum, as follows:

[edited]@twc.com incoming mail.twc,com outgoingmail.twc,com incoming port 995 outgoing port 587 security type TLS

Got the same error message: "Cannot find the server." etc. I then tried half a dozen different changes: change the security type, etc. Nothing worked.

I really need to succeed with this so that I can access all my email files and folders on one computer (the Win11 model). Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

Without client certificate configuration, the user can retrieve its emails on the dovecot IMAPs server using a password.

When I try to authenticate the user with an S/MIME client certificate, the dovecot server reports that: ```dovecot: imap-login: Login aborted: Connection closed (client didn't send a cert) (client_ssl_cert_missing)```

Here is the configuration: 1. On the client side: I've imported into thunderbird: - the self-signed CA certificate - the user's S/MIME client certificate which is fine: ```

1. pk12util -l user@example.com.p12

Enter password for PKCS12 file: Certificate(has private key):

   Data:
       Version: 3 (0x2)
       Serial Number:
           00:c3:10:d5:01:d1:9c:3c:4c:26:a7:a9:4d:90:f0:49:
           03:a8:f3:71:d6
       Signature Algorithm: PKCS #1 SHA-256 With RSA Encryption
       Issuer: "O=Example,ST=Yvelines,C=FR"
       Validity:
           Not Before: Mon Feb 23 14:26:26 2026
           Not After : Thu Feb 21 14:26:26 2036
       Subject: "E=user@example.com,CN=user@example.com,O=Example,ST=Yvel
           ines,C=FR"
       Subject Public Key Info:
           Public Key Algorithm: PKCS #1 RSA Encryption
           RSA Public Key:
               Modulus:
                   c7:f9:af:0a:53:72:a9:de:f0:db:bb:ad:86:90:15:f1:
                   ...
               Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)
       Signed Extensions:
           Name: Certificate Basic Constraints
           Data: Is not a CA.

           Name: Certificate Key Usage
           Usages: Digital Signature
                   Non-Repudiation
                   Key Encipherment

           Name: Extended Key Usage
               E-Mail Protection Certificate

           Name: Certificate Subject Key ID
           Data:
               68:5f:60:6d:8b:c8:0c:28:e3:d9:49:ca:bd:c7:25:a0:
               24:4c:2c:40

           Name: Certificate Authority Key Identifier
           Key ID:
               00:eb:69:5d:78:80:7f:1b:7f:e3:2b:fa:15:c3:9b:e6:
               68:98:fa:f6

           Name: Certificate Subject Alt Name
           RFC822 Name: "user@example.com"

   Signature Algorithm: PKCS #1 SHA-256 With RSA Encryption
   Signature:
       71:1b:e4:78:b0:21:f7:20:78:50:80:87:c8:71:a2:9c:
       ...
   Fingerprint (SHA-256):
       7F:8D:00:DF:04:02:39:90:11:B2:7D:5F:D3:EE:A7:2D:EF:58:B3:A9:4B:79:ED:D5:FE:2A:70:74:06:33:ED:31
   Fingerprint (SHA1):
       4E:7C:3B:31:58:32:8A:C3:42:26:CB:D3:DB:54:95:C5:C1:06:19:14

Key(shrouded):

   Encryption algorithm: PKCS #5 Password Based Encryption v2 
       Encryption:
           KDF: PKCS #5 Password Based Key Derive Function v2 
               Parameters:
                   Salt:
                       f2:73:28:5b:0b:6c:36:ec:1f:ca:1d:19:b3:77:87:7e
                   Iteration Count: 2048 (0x800)
                   KDF algorithm: HMAC SHA-256
           Cipher: AES-256-CBC
               Args:
                   04:10:be:da:bb:10:d3:94:e0:82:b3:2b:c2:ad:39:b5:
                   3b:4e

``` I've setup the account to - use its certificate - use a TLS certificate as an authentication method. There is no S/MIME certificate option.

2. On the dovecot (2.4.1) server side: The server is configured to require client certificates for all IMAP connection: ``` protocol imap {

 ssl_server_ca_file = /etc/ssl/CA_CRL.pem
 ssl_server_request_client_cert = yes
 ssl_server_cert_username_field = commonName
 
 auth_ssl_require_client_cert=yes
 auth_ssl_username_from_cert = yes

} ```

Does that mean that I also have to import a TLS client certificate? If so, what format should it (.p12, .crt...) be?

I bought a new computer, when I set it up one of our email accounts populated (X@cox.net)but the other did not (Y@cox.net). We get our email through yahoo and I can find the mail in Yahoo for Y@cox.net. The emails are showing up on my phone so something is working. how do I get it to populate Thunderbird?

(PII redacted by moderator)