Thunderbird Community Forum

Hello, Attached are the messages I have been receiving ever since 6 October 2025. I've tried to read about fixing these myself, to no avail. (I mean, I can Read; I just can't fix this.) I've tried to Compact ALL folders individually. But that seemed to do nothing. (Before 6 October, the Thunderbird window would at least "flicker" a little after compact.) Trash is empty. Tried disabling McAfee AntiVirus & Firewall. And, no, this isn't happening because I'm using McAfee; I've been using McAfee since Windows XP and Thunderbird since before it "broke away" from Mozilla. They have, until 6 October, played nice together. I really like Thunderbird so I do not want to find another email client/program/what-have-you. There are LOTS of saved emails that I cannot move/copy to "save space", so...Help? Please?

Thanking you in advance, tonyg

P.S.-I am not computer illiterate. But, slow, easy to follow, non-BIOS changing, step by step directions would be preferred.

Dear all, After migrating Thunderbird to a new computer with Windows 11, I noticed that Thunderbird no longer opens links in emails. When I click on a link, no browser opens and nothing happens, even though I can see on the bottom bar that it recognises the HTTP link. How can I fix this? Reinstalling the programme did not help, and I would like to keep the profile and email settings I already have. Kind regards

I do not want to use Thunderbird anymore. So I deleted my two mail accounts, but thunderbird still remembers them - this I do not want. And how can I close thunderbird definitely, thunderbird also forgot already the main password... Thanks for help!

I am really really distraught right now. It took me two weeks to get the time and focus to write a long reply to a company's nice email to me. Stayed up till 2am to write it. Deliberately wanted to re-read it in the morning before sending. Gone. Nowhere to be found. I pressed "Save to draft" before closing my laptop. But not saved. This account actually has a "draft" folder, unlike most of my other accounts in Thunderbird, which I also cannot figure out and no one has helped me with.

Hello,

I’m encountering an issue after migrating my domain and professional email service.

My address was originally hosted by Cabanova and configured in Thunderbird. I recently transferred the domain and email hosting to OVH, which caused the old mail server configuration to stop working.

Here’s the current situation:

The account in Thunderbird is still using a POP server (ssl0.ovh.net – port 995), while OVH uses IMAP (port 993).

I cannot change the server type from POP to IMAP within the existing account settings.

When I try to add a new account, Thunderbird completely freezes after I click “Continue” and never gives me access to “Manual Configuration.”

I also cannot delete the existing account because it contains all my previous local emails that I need to keep.

At the moment, I’m able to send emails from this account via OVH, but I don’t receive any incoming messages.

What I’d like to do is simply update the server configuration to OVH’s IMAP settings, without losing my existing local messages or recreating the entire profile.

Could you please let me know if there’s a way to:

Force an existing POP account to switch to IMAP,

Or safely recreate the account as IMAP without losing local data and without Thunderbird freezing during setup?

Thank you in advance for your assistance,

We have poor eyesight, so in vertical display mode, we could really benefit from having grid lines (at least horizontally) to visually distinguish each message. We have read various solutions on the Internet, but none seems to work at least not in dark theme mode, which is the default for a great many people with vision impairments (or just plain tired eyes). Perhaps some solutions that once worked have been uprooted, so to speak, during the course of Thunderbird updates.

We are used to having grid lines in Outlook (desktop). We are currently exploring switching to Thunderbird, but it needs to support our vision needs. For us, this capability is fundamental, not optional.

We are comfortable making config entries, creating and working in userChrome.css, and the like. We would be grateful for any guidance in this regard.

Thank you kindly!

When sending an email using the keyboard shortcut, the settings tell me that I can set TB to give me a confirmation prompt. Why can't I get a confirmation prompt when using the Send button? Is there any way to make TB do that?

I set TB to run a spell check before sending, and that gives me an opportunity to cancel the Send operation. But it only works if the email contains a misspelling.

Thank you.

Greetings! I read everywhere that we must install the Lightning add-on to use the calendar feature in Thunderbird. But when I search for this add-on, I get a bazillion options, none of which appears Lightning. There is something called Lightning Calendar Tabs that keeps coming up. Is this it? Doesn't seem so.

Where can one download/install the Lightning add-on?

Thank you.

My e-mails are sorted from earliest (top) to the latest (bottom). Suddenly about 15 messages have gone out of order. Early ones have appeared towards the bottom (later ones, have appeared under those). Is there an easy way of moving them so they are all sequential?

Thanks

My Spectrum password was changed and now I cannot get direct access to TB. For some reason TB is not linking up with Spectrum password. I get a popup panel saying "Login to server Mail.TWC.Com with username jomar159@hvc.rr.com failed" Retry Enter New password Cancel I have 2 accounts on TB 1 is wmarks1 and the other is jomar159@hvc.rr.com HELP

I have several email accounts of all types (IMAP, POP, etc.) managed by a single Thunderbird instance (v140.3.1esr 64-bit) running on Windows 11 (latest update).

A few weeks ago, I noticed that the 'Trash' folder on one of my IMAP accounts lost the 'Empty Trash' context menu item. Email I deleted still went to the 'Trash' folder, but I needed to delete them manually. 'Trash' folders on other accounts continued to work as expected.

This afternoon, I noticed that the deleted mails were no longer going to the 'Trash' folder. Looking this up online, I found the following old topic from 2023: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1420657

However, the link cited within that post (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1156586) no longer seems to exist and the details cited there no longer seems to be applicable as the interface and other details provided are no longer representative of the product today.

The elements of the post that seem applicable is a potential corruption of the 'Smart Mailboxes'. If I look at <ProfilePath>/Mail/smart mailboxes, I have several files associated with folders that may or may not be associated with the 'Trash' folder of the email account suffering from this problem. Given the date stamps, I'm not sure what they represent or even if they are involved in the currently running product.

Do note that I have been using this client for more going on 20 years.

Can you please provide updated troubleshooting steps and help me understand how I can map the folders under 'Mail' to the appropriate accounts to be sure I am not disturbing account email that is functioning properly.

Thanks in advance for the help,

AJ

I've never blocked images from loading (and I did check my settings and they haven't changed) but now many of my emails now have all images blocked just showing empty squares where the images should be. What happened?