Thunderbird Community Forum

I'm trying to set up Thunderbird to use for my email ([redacted] @icloud.com). I have an iCloud account and get my email with a browser going to iCloud but I don't know of a password specific to my email account. The password that I use for Apple iCloud does not work. What do I do? Thanks. Ed

My current Thunderbird profile has been created dirctly in ...AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird. <Profiles> does exist but not contain any recent files or data. How do I restore a proper data structure without losing any emails, settings or other data?

The screenshot shows the present structure

My name is Barrie Johnson. I have been a Mozilla Thunderbird user for my e-mail services for many years. In the past couple of days I have been getting messages from Google telling me that my e-mail provider - i.e. Mozilla Thunderbird - will not allow Google to access it, with the result that I cannot get to a current version of my Inbox and there is no trace of my calendar details. Can you please help me?

The issue has been "An error occurred connecting to mail.mediacombb.net:993." on the server page, where you can "test connection to server" in Account > Server Settings > Security Settings. I get the same error message for each four different accounts. I have no problems with the other two different accounts not associated with Mediacom (MC). I contacted MC and they said my settings were correct and to contact TB. I have read several posts with no real solutions except that was resolved through an update. I plan to switch to a different Linux distro later. I am currently using Big Linux Manjaro with the latest update. Note that I had no problems with TB until last month. I do not do the uninstall/reinstall apps unless it will resolve my issues as a last resort. Second, sometimes I receive MC e-mails and did not run the "test connection to server," then until today while troubleshooting for several hours. I was trying to send out an e-mail, which I had no problems last week. I already went to Account > Server Settings > Advanced and changed the "Maximum number of server connections to cache" from 5 down to 1 with no luck.

  The e-mail server settings are:

imap.mediacombb.net 993 SSL/TLS Normal Password and smtp.mediacombb.net 587 STARTTLS Normal Password They have not been changed since I switched from windows 10 to Zorin 18 to currently Big Linux Manjaro. I attempted to locate a method to check if the server settings were correct via Terminal. M$ Outlook has a test page that you can send to yourself or another e-mail account. Last, MC tech informed me that M$ Outlook is more friendly than TB. I know that I have used M$ Outlook for years and rarely had any connection issues unlike TB. Unlike Evolution, which was my first after M$ Outlook, TB is much better and easier than Evolution. Thank you in advance for your time and advice.

Thunderbird stopped downloading gmail this morning. It worked fine yesterday. I've restarted it 3 times to no avail. It says "Connected to imap.googlemailcom..." and it's been saying that for 2 1/2 hours now. Please help.

And please respond in non-tech terms. I am an old lady and I don't understand any of the stuff in the "help" section of your website. Still running Win10 because I can't handle the learning curve to 11. Please and thank you.

Thunderbird had been working great for both of us until after my wife stopped checking her emails for a couple of months. When she later opened the program her inbox started downloading hundreds of emails (very slowly) until her inbox contained well over a thousand. I started to delete the unwanted ones but it went very very slowly. I finally whittled it down to a few hundred but the program continues to run very slowly in all phases. In one instance, it took 11 minutes to delete 39 messages. Downloading and sending are not much different. I've done virus scans, checked settings, restarted the computer etc., all to no avail. And when we switch users, my Thunderbird email runs perfectly. I also contacted my internet provider (Spectrum) but they said it had to be a program issue. How can I restore my wife's email to normal function? Thanks, Joe S.

I have had Thunderbird from the time I acquired my Mac computer. This week it started to do something new. After a restart I opened Thunderbird. A box came up that says across the top System Integration. The cursor balloons, and hasn't stopped for the time I powered the computer, as least fifteen minutes. You know how the program icons are in a dock across the bottom. With other browsers open, hitting the Thunderbird icon doesn't bring its window into the forefront. This needs either a reset, or possibly a backup first. Is there a quicker way to fix this? Thanks in advance. I am not using a VPN; but I also have Thunderbird on my Windows 11. You might have seen a more recent thread on that installation. I included a screenshot. It was easier here to do that than on the Windows 11. On the Mac, I just had to use Activity Monitor to close out of Thunderbird in order to get its version.

I have been using Thunderbird for several years to read and send my Comcast.net email. As of 5/23/26 Thunderbird is no longer showing my new emails. However, when I login directly to my Comcast.net email account their are plenty of new emails.

I thought that perhaps Thunderbird is using the wrong password to try to get my comcast.net email. So I examined my password by going to Menu > Settings > Privacy & Security > Saved Passwords , which opens the "saved logins" window. Then I pressed "show passwords." I found that instead of showing my usual comcast.net password, it showed something that is bogus and several hundred characters long. I right clicked on the bogus password, selected "edit password" and entered my usual correct password. The "saved logins" window then showed the correct password. Finally I closed the "saved logins" window.

Then I opened the "saved logins" window again and confirmed that the password was still correct.

Then I exited Thunderbird and restarted it. Usually, when I start Thunderbird it simply opens my inbox window and shows me my new emails. But now a separate browser window opened from xfinity (comcast) showing my email account name and asking me to sign in. I pressed the "Let's Go" button and is prompted me for my password to the comcast.net account, which I entered. This password was entered in a browser window with URL "https://login.xfinity.com/login" so it seems legitimate. The browser window then disappeared and I assumed Thunderbird would now show my emails.

Sadly, Thunderbird did not show updated emails. So I went back to Menu > Settings > Privacy & Security > Saved Passwords and checked the password. For some reason is had changed to another, different, bogus and several hundred characters long.

I have attached a screen shot of the "Saved Logins" window showing the bogus password and another screenshot of the entire bogus passwords before and after I entered the correct password.

I have been pleased with Thunderbird for a long time, but this has me worried.

Can you give advice?

Tom Moriarty

Hello,

Every now and then Thunderbird pops up the notification in the screenshot. Can anyone tell me what it means and if I should do anything about it?

Alan.

I'm changing email servers and need the best way to automatically backup my complete(multiple domains and user accounts) emails in thunderbird to a separate drive or local machine before changing servers. I would prefer an automated way to do this so I can continue to update backup file routinely

I already back up my profile regularly to a remote drive

Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

Hi! I am having an issue with displaying sent mails. As you can see in the screenshot (cropped for privacy), I have selected the option to "Place replies in the folder of the message being replied to", which to me means that eg. a reply I sent will both be shown in the "inbox" folder in the message thread, as well as in the "sent" folder. However, it only shows up in the "inbox" folder. Why does this not work?

Thanks!

My Windows 11 was recently reinstalled to factory settings, which uninstalled Thunderbird but saved my mobx files. I used Thunderbird exclusively to view older emails that are stored on my PC as mobx files. I do not use Thunderbird as an active email client. I reinstalled Thunderbird, but have been unable to get it to find my mobx files that are stored together in a folder.