thunderbird is not downloading emails from yahoo

Please disable your antivirus program (Norton is particularly bad at allowing the downloading message to appear and preventing anything else, but it is not alone) and attempt to download your mail and see if it might be the issue.

Matt, I know I wrote alot in my post, but in it I did mention "I turned off my antivirus, closed Thunderbird, and restarted it, and that didn't change anything". I even added Yahoo as an approved URL in my antivirus program to no avail. And I know the antivirus isn't the issue because I have two other Yahoo email accounts linked to Thunderbird, and all those emails download fine. I even forwarded emails to one of the email accounts that works, and it downloaded to Thunderbird. The crazy thing is that since my original post, thinking that one of the emails might have something associated with it that is preventing all post 5/25/26 emails from downloading to Thunderbird, I moved all the 5/26/26 emails in Yahoo to the Yahoo spam folder. I restarted Thunderbird, but nothing downloaded. So, I then moved all the 5/26/26 emails in the Yahoo spam folder back to the Yahoo Inbox. Surprisingly, a few of the 5/26/26 emails were downloaded to Thunderbird. I played around with moving mail to spam, but couldn't replicate the download to Thunderbird. Now there are a lot more emails in Yahoo email that won't download to Thunderbird. I even tried to forward various emails, and they appeared in Yahoo, but wouldn't download to Thunderbird. So, I'm not sure what allowed some of the 5/26/26 emails to download to Thunderbird. The ones that went through had no attachments. But there are a lot of emails that do not have attachments and are stuck. I even moved all the emails with attachments into spam, and nothing went through. I'm thinking I need to delete the one email account in Thunderbird and relink it; but I've created a lot of sub folders in the inbox that I don't want to lose. So, I'm not sure how to reinstall the subfolders after I relink the email account.

Matt, for some reason, I couldn't log into my geeproperties account. I used the "forgot password" option, but Mozilla never sent me the email to reset my password. After an hour, I logged in to this forum with my Apple account, thus the second post with profile name ydrjk2d59t. Monzilla is still not sending me an email to reset my geeproperties password. Anyways, it's been three weeks since Thunderbird stopped downloading emails for 1 of my 3 accounts with Yahoo. I've had to go to Yahoo to read and respond to emails. I've pretty much exhausted every option mentioned in forums and performed some of my own. There are a number of people listing the same issue with Yahoo and Gmail since 2025. I have not read one post with a successful way to fix the issue. I was going to delete and reinstall the one email account, but someone with a Gmail account said they did this, and the same download problem still occurred. Everyone said they could send emails, but not download. None of the posts indicated they had more than one email account. It seems odd to me that the other 2 of 3 yahoo email accounts still work to download and send emails with Thunderbird. So, it can't be an " Yahoo URL exception" issue with my antivirus or firewall. I know Thunderbird is successfully connecting to Yahoo because Thunderbird shows there are 60 emails to be downloaded, but won't download them. Yahoo has a lot more emails, but Yahoo or Thunderbird knows that only 60 have not been downloaded. So there has to be something in Thunderbird that trips and prevents Yahoo (and Gmail) from completing the download. As previously mentioned, someone replied that is could be a single email that is being flagged and stopped from downloading; thus blocking all other emails from downloading. But I tested that theory by moving all the emails needing to be downloaded from the Yahoo inbox to the spam box. I gradually moved emails from the spam box back to the inbox. I did have 3 of the oldest ones downloaded to Thunderbird, but nothing more. So this proves that some filter in Thunderbird or Yahoo is preventing/blocking the download. Does anyone have a solution, or can Thunderbird look into this and fix the issue, if it's a programming glitch?

geeproperties, Thanks for the detective work. I did many of the things you tried without success and was about to give up when I came across your post. Instead of moving all my yahoo webmail to spam, I moved the one email from USPS with a subject line "USPS® Expected Delivery on ..." to spam. Then all my emails in yahoo quickly downloaded to TB, Made my day. Thanks!

Bob, So glad my post helped someone else! I was at a total loss after trying so many of the things posted in forums without any success. It was disappointing that so many people posted this issue, even from a year ago, and yet there was no one from Mozilla who could provide a solution. OR maybe someone figured it out and just didn't bother to post the solution. So, thanks for writing to let me know that my solution also helped you. Did you go to USPS notifications and turn off the email option, and check the text option? FYI, I did notify USPS about this issue, but I don't know what they can do differently since this seems to only be happening with Thunderbird.

Hey all,

Just confirming that I've got this exact same issue which showed up in the last month or so:

• Thunderbird client 153.0.2 (64-bit) on Fedora 44 Linux
• Yahoo email account
• USPS Informed delivery email messages - specifically the "Tracking" updates cause Thunderbird to timeout. The daily digest messages are not causing problems.

Moving the USPS Tracking messages off into a separate folder solves the issue so I know it's not specifically a Yahoo problem, more that Thunderbird has trouble parsing the USPS content.

For what it's worth I fed an one of these messages thru ChatGPT and it pointed out that there are some questionably formatted HTML tags in it. Guessing that at some point in the last few months the folks at USPS changed something for the worse and Thunderbird is choking on it. If anyone on the Thunderbird team wants to look at one of these for diagnostics I've got a whole folder full of them.

So for now I've just turned off the tracking reports.

Hi, I have the same problem since the last few days. But I cannot find any "USPS" messages in my system anywhere, and also not in my Yahoo webmail box where I can see all the emails up to date. When I delete messages from my Thunderbird inbox that came before this started, it will download those same emails again to my Thunderbird strange enough. I have no idea how to solve this. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks, Koen

Pulling mail issue with Yahoo started about 2 weeks ago. Am on Thunderbird 156.0.1 (64-bit). I can confirm it is the USPS tracking email that is the bottleneck. If I open Thunderbird and then open Yahoo web mail and delete the USPS tracking emails (that I can see fine in Yahoo web), immediatly Thunderbird pulls in the rest of the mail.

When another USPS tracking notification comes in (have several packages under track), then I stop getting mail in Thunderbird for this Yahoo account. Delete the USPS under Yahoo web and back to normal.

Koenwentink, this is Geeproperties replying, but couldn't get into my original account so I had to log in by another means. If you didn't receive any USP tracking emails, it has to be another email that is disallowing the rest of the emails to go through to TB. You'll need to go into your Yahoo email account and move several emails to spam and see if the rest of the emails go through. If the rest of the emails don't go through, you can return those emails in spam back to the inbox and move the next series of emails to spam. This is what I had to do to figure out USPS tracking was doing this. Alternatively, you might check if you received an email from another tracking service (UPS, Fed Ex, etc.). I figure it has to be the link inside an email (tracking or something), that is being seen as a threat and blocked, which then blocks all the rest of the email that came after it. That's my best guess. Let us know what you find out, so others with your same issue, have a resolution.

Great_deal98, this is Geeproperties replying, but couldn't get into my original account so I had to log in by another means. I'm glad to hear that my solution also helped you. It was so frustrating when no one from Yahoo was even aware of the issue. They suggested going to the forum, which wasn't of any help. After weeks of pondering why emails would be blocked in one account but not others, I figured something within an email was causing the blocks. So, I started moving emails to spam and testing my theory. After days of failing to see the email transfer through, I was about to give up, and then it happened. A few went through. I didn't know why the rest didn't go through, but eventually figured out it was another USPS tracking email. I'm glad that you and others found my solution and that it also helped you. I had hoped Yahoo would see my solution and address the issue with USPS tracking emails so no one else would have to deal with it. OR, that customer service knows of this issue so it can quickly help customers.

Damn, I still can not get into any sites, including Yahoo / ATT ,including USPS because to sign in they have to send me a code to this e-mail, so is there anything I can do to rid TB of these USPS tracking that I have turned on, because I get 2 e-mails and it stops and shows there are 200+ e-mails ready to DL. This is so freaking frustrating.

Hi all, I have the same issue and went through most of the same steps Geeproperties did and had the same poor result. The webmail is works correctly. So does sending email. Found the problem email from USPS tracking and from webmail placed in Spam. No help. Placed all the following emails into Spam. No help. Placed the prior inbox emails from previous 7 days as well as those in Trash. No help. On Thunderbird there are 16 emails waiting to be downloaded. Note before moving emails to Spam, there were 93 emails waiting to be loaded. I have done inbox folder repair and have restarted the program multiple times as well as rebooting the computer multiple times. If it matters, I am on Windows 10 and use the POP3 settings. I feel I am close, but not sure how to proceed. Your advice will be most appreciated. Thanks!

B0bb1, This is Geeproperties. For some reason, I couldn't log into my account and Mozilla says it's sending me a verification code, but it's not appearing in Yahoo. So, that could be another problem between Yahoo and Mozilla. Regarding your issue, you have to first get into the official Yahoo.com email account. There, you might see the emails from ATT and USPS providing your verification codes; However, you won't need to go into them, as the issue is within this official Yahoo.com email account. So, once in your Yahoo email account. Find a USPS tracking email. Record the return email address and run a search in your inbox for all the emails from the USPS tracking email address. Then move all those USPS tracking emails into the spam folder. Then restart your Thunderbird (TB) email account to refresh it. Emails should start downloading from Yahoo to TB. If you notice that there are more emails in Yahoo, there might be another email with a link in it that is preventing the download. Note the date of the last email that downloaded in TB. Go to Yahoo email and begin moving emails from that date into the spam folder. Keep doing this until you find the email in Yahoo email that is causing the problem. If you don't need to keep the emails causing the problem, delete them. Now go to USPS tracking and turn off notifications via email and turn on notifications via text. Until Yahoo, TB, and/or USPS address the problem within USPS' link that is preventing Yahoo from downloading messages to TB, this issue is going to continue. I have notified Yahoo and TB what I discovered, but there hasn't been any change...since you are still experiencing it. I'm assuming Yahoo and TB believe this is an issue the USPS has to address to comply with their security protocols. I hope this helps.

levinera, This is Geeproperties. I'm having an issue with Mozilla logging me into my Geeproperties account. They need me to verify, but the email with the verification code isn't coming to me. Regarding your issue, after you move the USPS tracking emails to Spam, you might need to close TB and reopen it to refresh it. See if this works. IF you don't have any USPS tracking emails, then there is another email from someone else that has a link within it that is blocking the ability to download between Yahoo and Thunderbird. In your TB email account, look at the last date you received emails. Then go to Yahoo email and begin searching emails on that date to see which has links within it. Move those to Spam. Then refresh TB and see if emails begin downloading.

B0bb1, You need to log into your official Yahoo email account. If you forgot your password or require a verification code, have Yahoo Text it to you. The problem with the USPS Tracking emails is within the Yahoo email. So, once you log into your yahoo email account. Look for the USPS tracking email. Record the email address. Then run a search for this email address. It will show you all the USPS Tracking emails. Move them all to Spam. Then close your TB email and reopen it to refresh it. See if the emails begin downloading. If you should notice Yahoo still has more emails than TB, there is another email with a link in the email that is preventing the emails to download from Yahoo to TB. Note the date of the late email you received in TB. Then go to Yahoo and begin searching emails with links within them. Move those to spam and see if the rest of the emails transfer from Yahoo to TB. If you find another email, other than USPS Tracking, causing the issue, please let us know. I hope this helps.

Thank you for the response. Unfortunately that didn't work for me. Although I either deleted or spammed the days around my problem (10.2.26), I continue to have 16 emails waiting to download. I am not sure what those would be.

Last update after doing all the above suggestions: I had 1,100 emails in webmail "Inbox." Created webmail "Inbox 2" and move all webmail "Inbox" emails to webmail "Inbox 2." Did a test message and it downloaded in TB. Transferred all recently diverted "Spam" message to webmail "Inbox" and they all downloaded into TB. Thank you all for your help!

Levinera, Thanks for the update. Great idea to create a second inbox and transfer emails into it. So, did your original inbox have USPS tracking emails that transferred to TB after moving the USPS tracking emails from inbox 1 to inbox 2? That would be interesting if it did.