Thunderbird Community Forum

I'm asking this question so I can post some helpful information for people wanting to create a backup of their profile.

If you are using Windows OS and you got your download from the official website: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/

How do you locate the correct folder to backup? The backup must contain everything, profiles, mail accounts, emails, address books, calendar, preferences - the lot. The backup can be used to transfer between computers.

I have four different email accounts. A week ago, all incoming and outgoing traffic suddenly stopped . Webmail works normally. I have no viruses, trojans, etc. I deleted one of the accounts and tried reinstalling it. I can't do it anymore. The system keeps responding: "Unable to authenticate to the server. Username or password configuration may be incorrect." But they are all abolutely correct. I don't know what else to do. Any clue? Thanks

I use vertical view. Hate threading so that's turned off. I use a medium to large message pane. Recently been having issues with column visibility. Not sure if this is new or whether it's that I've come to a Linux client from a Windows one and there's a setting I missed when I set up the client.

Essentially dragging the column divider doesn't work properly (for me). The columns always seem to auto adjust width. Similarly if I resize the message pane the columns don't remain fixed they auto adjust.

I don't find this helpful. I prefer to set up the columns to display the amount I want/need in subject and From and I truncate the date to simply not display time.

How do I set column widths to remain where I put them? Or is this function now lost.

Hi, I had/have an IMAP account at my ISP Host, with TB connecting to.

There has been a number of occasions where I have used the Servers IMAP copy of emails as a back up, and from memory am sure that when connecting a fresh client, all emails/folders etc updated and down loaded from the server > client, in fact nothing got deleted on either side, and both sides synced.

My host (Fasthosts - I will name and shame) deleted my whole IMAP account by mistake.

They hastily re-instated just the package but all the emails had been wiped from the server.

I did though have a full copy of all emails on my TB IMAP client.

When I reconnected my client to the server after the re-instatement, i expected my clients emails to upload to the server, but instead they 'vanished' - and I have nothing but empty folders.

Am I able to recover any of these emails from my client, ie are they sitting in a file/folder still ??

TB has restarted a number of times since, and I fear the folder may have been compacted, but I cannot be sure.

Thoughts appreciated.

I have 2 hotmail accounts - one gets mail as normal the other stopped on 28 April. Checked and settings are same for both except actual email address name. Till 28 April both worked normally. Haven't tried either starting another account for the problem name or deleting existing as don't want to lose anything. Haven't updated to latest version for same reason. How to fix please?? Cheers and thanks

Thunderbird is very glitchy and slow after the latest update - Thunderbird 140.11.1esr (20260522210329)

Especially, when I get a new email, Thunderbird stops responding for 5-10 seconds and then starts working.

I am using Windows 11

Hi, a long-time Thunderbird user here using 140.11.1esr (64-bit) Thunderbird for Linux Mintmint-001 - 1.0 with e-mail set up as IMAP for a hotmail.com e-mail.

I'm having (and always have tbh) had problems with saving only one copy of "Sent" e-mails and it's driving me scatty. In "Thunderbird setup" for my hotmail.com account, I always de-select "When sending messages, automatically Place a copy in "Sent" folder" as I know my Hotmail account does that and then Thunderbird will pick that up to store locally as part of the IMAP syncing. I get, as expected, only one "Saved" copy which is fine.

Then, for no apparent reason, I suddenly start to get duplicates even though the "de-select" is still there in Thunderbird setup for the account. The cure seems to be to select it as if I want 2 copies and send myself a test e-mail, then de-select it again so I only get one at which point I only get one copy again. It then works fine for weeks (or months!!!) then, bang, 2 copies start appearing again with nothing (seemingly) changed.

I also have a gmail.com account set up as IMAP which never changes - I've always only ever got one "Sent" copy as expected. Clearly, this points to some sort of weird Thunderbird/Hotmail config issue which is odd as the "mechanics" of Thunderbirds internal handling of copies should not be affected by the remote e-mail and yet the issue is with hotmail.com but never with gmail.com accounts. As a Comms/Radar engineer it's really got me!

Anyone else seen this and, if so, are you able to tell me what's up? What am I doing wrong? It's very odd. Cheers!

I received a spam message this morning that had a "Disposition-Notification-To" (aka Read Receipt) line that had MY email address on it. I honestly don't know why a spammer would do this - but that's not the issue. I have Read Receipts disabled, but Thunderbird generated an email (to me) and sent it to my mail host. This seems like a bug. Even if the Read Receipt has my email address on it (making it mostly harmless), Thunderbird shouldn't have generated the message. Or am I missing something? Thanks.

I can no longer download my email from the server to my Thunderbird email client since I removed the specifics for the server with the password. I need to add it back but I don't know how. Is there a file I can edit?

Hi! I'm hoping you can help me! I use Thunderbird, and have for many years, and I love it. My computer is on its last legs, and I'm trying to save up for a new one, but, yesterday I did something possibly stupid... (yeah, I know, you NEVER get people asking for help who've done stupid things, so this will be unusual... lol). Anyway... I turned my computer on and got a popup saying that my Thunderbird needs an update and it's been a while since I updated, so I hit OK on the update... Well, my arsehole of a computer chose that exact minute to shit itself and die. When I tried restarting it, my Thunderbird no longer works. Now I have a popup with a big red X that says "The installation seems to be corrupt. Please check your hardware and disk setup and/or re-install." Can you help me? I desperately need to check my email and have one I need to send. I don't know what to do. I've also got YEARS worth of emails sitting in the system, so I can't risk losing them, either. Please help. L.

I recently updated windows and since then I have not been able to login to my emails and or recover contacts or calendar on thunderbird. I am able to login to my primary email but I have no contacts and am not able to login to my other 2 email accounts.

I use Thunderbird with Threaded View enabled and would like to keep using it.

What I am looking for is a way to have Thunderbird automatically keep older threads collapsed, while allowing threads that contain new or unread messages to remain expanded or become expanded automatically.

For example, a thread receives a new message - it is fine for that thread to be expanded. All other existing threads without new activity should remain collapsed. When Thunderbird is restarted, I would like older threads to stay collapsed rather than having many previously viewed threads expanded.

Is there a setting, hidden preference, add-on, or workaround that provides this behavior?

I am using Thunderbird on Kubuntu Linux.

Thanks in advance. I'm trying to get Thunderbird setup with an outlook.com email address. All the default server settings look fine. I know the email address is good since I can login via a web browser. Cookies enabled and all the other recommended settings including app password. Yet it keeps saying Unable to log into the server. Has anyone successfully done this with the latest version of Thunderbird. I'm on Zorin 18 Pro.

Regards,

Mark Verhyden

I am getting a lot of email dated a month of more in the future. How do I best filter these out as junk? I tried making a regular filter, but can't find a way to set it to "greater than today."

Some bubble-headed bimbo wiped out the columns inside folders, and deleted the headers - which deleted Thunderbird's ability to choose sorting by date or contact. This f'd it up so BADLY, that I find it USELESS now. I'm going to have to find some other email program.

A 2nd way it was f'd up, is it now seems incapable of importing an existing archive of emails. I tried to do that, and it WIPED OUT the entire archive of "local folders", to create a brand new Local Folder lacking any contents at all. The old stash was DELETED. In the past, I've been able to use this feature of Local Folders, to use the same archive of email between several different OS installations of Thunderbird. Those glory days are gone, thanks to some genius. It seems to have lost the ability to do that.

Really, all this makes me sorry I contributed to Thunderbird, this year. What a waste.

I didn't select to be emailed when somebody answers, because without the sorting I won't be able to notice it happened.