Thunderbird Community Forum

Can I just copy the entire profile folder and name it as a backup or do I have to copy the contents of the folder?

I just want to create a backup to include all my email messages.

Thanks

A few months ago I installed Thunderbird onto a new PC having previously used it on a previous PC (so I'm not a newbie).. However I'm seeing a persistent issue that I never saw before...

I've a regular contact whose name I won't specify but let's call him Roger Smith. What happens is that whenever I post something on a forum (such as this one) and somebody replies, the replies look as if they came from Roger Smith - even though he's got no connection with the actual forum.

It doesn't happen with every forum - for example it doesn't happen with this one - but it does affect most of them. Has anyone else ever reported this and is there anything I can do to correct it?

2026-04-25 SAT 14:45 BST I have boujht a DigiCert S/MIME Class 1 certificate from thesslstore, but I have not yet got it. They sent me 3 .crt files, but I have not understood how to use them. I hope someone can explain the problem and/or suggest what I can do about it please ? I do not remember having this sort of problem in previous years.

The website https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/ provides portable download for Linux, but I seem to understand there's no such a version for Linux ARM (aarch64).

Is that planned in the future?

thanks in advance

When I click "Empty Trash," the trash is emptied. However, the status indicator (number of emails) remains unchanged until I click the trash icon again. Is there a missing "Refresh" function?

I have created several categories that I use to assign a color to each of my calendar event entries. When I do this, the event shows a very thing stripe of my assigned category color down the righthand side of the entry. I would REALLY like the entries to be colored entirely with my category colors rather than that tiny stipe. Is this feature available and if not, I am hoping it can be considered in the very near future.

Dear Community,

I have a LAN connected desktop Windows 11 computer using Thunderbird 140.10.0esr (32-bit) synced to two different Apple calendars with no issues.

I also have two Wi-Fi connected laptop Windows 11 computers using Thunderbird 150.0 (64-bit) each synced to the same two Apple calendars above. I haven't had any sync issues with these until lately and I believe they are setup exactly the same as the desktop computer above.

For example if I attempt to "Add" a calendar entry I will get the following error message: "If you're seeing this message after snoozing or dismissing a reminder and this is for a calendar you do not want to add edit events for, you can mark this calendar as read-only to avoid such experience in future. To do so, get to the calendar properties by right clicking on this calendar in the list in the calendar or task view."

I have tried removing the calendar and adding it back but I still get the same intermittent sync issues and get these type of error messages. I have no extensions.

Not sure if this might be a software bug in the latest 150.0 (64-bit) release because 140.10esr (32-bit) appears to work fine on my desktop computer.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

I recieve several emails a day from a submission form on my website that contain what looks like Russian words. I would like to create a message filter to move these messages directy to the trash based on one or two characters that do not appear in the english language. I thought I had done it, but the filters don't appear to work.

I am using Thunderbird on a Macbook Pro 13-inch mid-2012, in a POP3 account

Thunderbird 140.10 is generally running fine, except that some sub-folders are not visible in my Thunderbird email tool view. I have a hierarchical

I have tried repairing the parent folders, but that had no effect.

The corresponding .sbd files are clearly visible in ~/<user>/Library>/<profile>/Mail/Local Folders/pop-server.<account> and being backed up in Time Machine backups.

Curiously, there is a much-truncated replica of some .sbd folders in Local Folders named /<folder-name>.sbd, all dated in 2013, yet the folder was created in 2017. I presume these refer to an update of Thunderbird that left some trash, and of no consequence. These are parallel to Archives and Archives.msf files.

Please advise on how to disambiguate this structure and recover views of existing mail folders not being displayed.

I recently created a Google Workspace account. There, I have a user profile with a custom email address. I've set up the new account in Thunderbird, and it is working as expected. If I send a message from my "external" account to the workspace account, it arrives, and I'm able to reply back.

One feature of Google Workspace is what they call "alternate email" addresses. They sort of work as an alias for the native address. I have created one such alternate. If I send a message from my external account to the alias, it arrives correctly in the workspace account. However, when I reply from the workspace account, it does not go back to the originating address, but instead it is addressed back to the alias. If I repeat the experiment from the Gmail web interface, it replies to the correct address.

I've downloaded all the headers, and the Return-Path tag is correct. I can provide the full header if needed.

It feels like there is an invisible forwarding action to get from the alias to the workspace account, and that the reply action is incorrectly finding the interim alias. But that doesn't really seem to be what I see in the headers - although I'm probably not the most expert reader of those.

And it isn't necessarily a Thunderbird issue. I can see that there could be something going on with Google. But this is a good place to start...  :-)

I cannot find a way to sync my tasks on my thunderbird Windows desktop with my android phone.I have tried byrdiesync, but byrdiesync says they cannot do it.Is there some way to do this?

Hi, I am hoping that the community can help me find an answer to this. I have two computers that I use for work. The one in the office has TB running all the time and before I leave for the weekend/vacation I would close TB, copy the profile folder to a USB (or copy it to cloud) and then paste the profile folder on my work laptop (at home). While all the settings get copied (local folders structure, addons etc.) as I use IMAP, it downloads all the mail on the new system regardless. I thought that it should have the latest mail downloaded as part of the profile folder, is that not the case? The bigger issue is that none of the Completed Tasks Lists, Templates, etc. get updated. It still shows all the older stuff on the work laptop and no updates carry over from the PC (at work). Going through the profile folder I see multiple copies of the files prefs.js, folderCache.json, global-messages-db.sqlite appended as: prefs-computername.js and folderCache-computername.json etc. (The computername is the name of the PC - office/laptop) The profile name is the same between the two computers. TB is only started after the profile is copied locally. TB version is the same between systems. I am left scratching my head why somethings are copied but not others. Hoping that the community can help me here. Thanks!

Active Sync 16+ is now in force and Thunderbird has lost the sync via TBsync, so contacts and calendar syncing is now dead, unless TBsync is updated quickly, seems unlikely from reading their website. TB has advised that contacts and calendar are still on a dream list and no date for implementation is known. So TB is no longer a substitute for users wanting to escape Outlook. I am a long time user of TB and a donator, so why have you not pre-planned the inclusion of contacts and calendar sooner or even included TBsync into the code and kept its syncing ability uptodate.

TB with just email sync is no different to many email apps that come with laptop and tablets, so I may as well revert to using in my case Apple Mail.

Regards, SPT

I used to get REMINDERS for all events/tasks until about some months ago. But now I don't get the reminders for most events/tasks. rearly I do get reminders randomly and ocasionally. I have been using TB (Thunderbird) for many years without any problems. I update TB religeously as updates become available. Please advise the fix. Thanks in advance! Anil Deshpande

I have Thunderbird on Windows 11. I have been using Local folders for a long time without any problems. I now find that if I try to delete subfolders in Local folders, they reappear as if they had not been deleted. This applies to any mails I have received since 28th January 2026. Could this be associated with a windows update?

After tried many suggested steps to trouble shooting the problems, it still can't download Comcast emails. It keeps pop up "enter password" or "password failed" again and again. But I can send emails. I can't upload the trouble shooting information file to send. Thanks