Thunderbird Community Forum

For no reason I can determine my leftmost column displaying my accounts and archive folders has disappeared. I have spent hours trying to find an answer but nothing I have tried has worked.

I need to know how to change the password. I didn't change it, so I can't use the standard method of resetting it. I have been using AOL to get my email and it is terrible. How do I get my Thunderbird back?

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a privacy-friendly email setup and ran into a challenge with Thunderbird.

My setup: I have a catch-all email address that forwards all incoming emails sent to *@mydomain.com to my real mailbox, secret@mydomain.com. This way, I can use aliases like alias1@mydomain.com, alias2@mydomain.com, etc., without exposing my actual address.

This part works perfectly.

The problem: When replying to a message sent to alias1@mydomain.com, Thunderbird automatically uses secret@mydomain.com as the sender address. That defeats the purpose — the recipient now sees my secret address, which I wanted to keep hidden.

Thunderbird offers a workaround via identities, but it requires creating a separate identity for every single alias, which becomes unmanageable if you use a lot of them.

My attempted solution: My idea was to have my mail server insert a header like:

X-Alias: alias1@mydomain.com

Then, on sending, the server could rewrite the From: header using that value — thus preserving the alias and protecting my actual address.

However, I discovered that Thunderbird strips custom headers like X-Alias when sending. That breaks the solution.

My questions: 1. Is there any way to configure Thunderbird to preserve specific custom headers like X-Alias during sending? 2. Alternatively, is there a better or recommended approach to achieving what I’m trying to do — replying from the alias address automatically, without exposing the real one, and without creating hundreds of identities?

I’d really appreciate any ideas, insights, or suggestions. Thank you!

Unable to reply or send email in Thunderbird for my charter.net email account. Message is saying 206.204.230.184 is blocked. When using "WHOIS IP, is says it is Beacon Broadband, who is my internet provider. Strange part to me is that if I go to charter (now Spectrum) through my browser it has no problem though I am on the same computer with the same internet provider. What setting needs to be changed to restore this outgoing email issue? Thank you for your support!

Hello I recently downloaded the latest version of Thunderbird for Mac operating system (and made a donation!) and today I experienced something I have never seen before. A large number of my sub-folders have duplicate names but there is nothing in those folders. Years and years of email messages are seemingly lost.

Please advise as to how I should proceed to restore my email to the way it was working before I downloaded the latest version of Thunderbird.

I have attached a screenshot showing some of the duplicate folders with no content... Thank you Jeff Koseff

Updated to Thunderbird 140 for Mac (OS 18.5 and 17.x) and now cannot send emails -- on two different machines: one an iMac, the other a MacBook.

About 10 or 20 seconds after hitting "Send", we get an error message saying "Sending of the message failed. An error occurred while sending mail: Outgoing server (SMTP) error. The server responded: EHLO [13 hex characters] internal error AUP#EML-005."

Our settings and password have not changed, and they are all correct according to our ISP.

Your latest request for donations has evidently come with a forced upgrade which I did not authorise. I have been happily using an older version of TB because it supports my add-ons and themes. Now because of your uninvited intrusion they no longer work. Furthermore it seems that I can no longer download an older version that supports my requirements. NOT HAPPY!

Hello,

We’re developing a headless, accessible interface to Thunderbird for blind users, and we’re integrating with the browser.messages.list() and browser.messages.query() APIs to access email content.

We’ve encountered an issue: the Thunderbird web extension API requires messages to be downloaded and stored locally to access their full content via the getFull() endpoint, but there appears to be no way to programmatically trigger a message download from IMAP using a message ID or header.

To minimize disk usage, we only want to store the most recent 30 days of messages locally. However, when we enable “Synchronize the most recent 1 month” in Account Settings → Synchronization & Storage, Thunderbird begins syncing from the oldest messages in the account (starting in 2008), rather than downloading the most recent month (e.g., June 15 – July 15, 2025).

My questions: Is there any way to configure Thunderbird to download and store only the latest (by date) 30 days of IMAP messages?

Alternatively, is there a way to use the WebExtension API to access the full content of recent IMAP messages without syncing the entire history?

I'm currently using Thunderbird 128.11.0esr on Linux (MATE desktop).

Any advice or workarounds would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

I'm trying to setup tbsync to use with Google Contacts. I'm running 128.12.0 esr. I've installed tbsync and Google-4-tbsync.

I followed the instructions to create Google credentials, but where do I put them? And the account setup for tbsync asks for a "client secret" - what's that?

20 years of emails apparently gone. I have been trying to add TB to a new laptop.

I used the export function in TB and was directed to create a zip file since it was over 2GB. I used 7Zip to view the file and it did not show up in the program. I did this a few times and it kept doing the same thing. When it actually worked I got about 2% of the emails. I believe that, as a result of doing this, that the profile was corrupted by the process of creating a zip file. The result? The original profile on the old laptop is no longer valid. Most of the time when I tried to unzip the file it displayed an error message. I have been through so much over the last few days I cannot remember the entire error but it had the word invalid in it. A red banner across the top of the screen.

I have scoured all my devices for profiles and have tried every one I could find. I was told that using old profiles without them going through the process of TB versions that unexpected results may happen. The latest result, which happens with every profile I use is what is in the attached image. Nothing in or under the inbox, and all this under the outbox.

Is there anything I can do to fix this?

Peer Certification expiration - Why is this Pop-up showing up after many years of thunderbird use and why does it prevent receiving and sending emails. It wants a certificate or an exception with out adequate explanation or guidance.

I did not have account set up and because I couldn.t receive email confirmation could not seek help. I contacted Norton who appeared on the company example and they could not resolve. Given I could not get access thunderbird for assistance, I did an uninstall and reinstall. I lost my addresses but at least I was able to sent and receive emails again. the Pop up had gone away.

I set up my second email and when I completed this set up I was greeted by this pop-up. What is this all about and what are the risks. How is it resolved?

I am currently using Thunderbird as a client for a Gmail account. I am trying to add another one but get a message: "server already exists". How do I add the second email account?

using Tbird, 3 email accounts are working fine. login to att mail server fails always. Att server settings: imap, port 993, ssl, normal password, smtp port 465. i can login to att from web apps and numerous email programs. I want to use Tbird again, have previously used it for years!

Hi, I wonder if anyone has had a similar problem - since a few days I get an immediate SMTP timeout in Thunderbird for some mail servers but not all. For Outlook the same server works just fine. Version 140.0.1esr has recently been autoinstalled. It is possible that the problems started when that version was installed but I am not sure about the timing. The email provider has no explanation and claims there is no problem on its side. Also, Thunderbird has recently asked me to confirm a server certificate for receiving emails. Usually when that happens I also get asked the same question when sending emails, but this time I did not get the question for sending, I just get the timeout message.

Thanks,

Magnus

Hi all.

Previously, when moving to a new computer (Windows 11) with Thunderbird, I would install a new instance of Thunderbird on the new computer and run it once. This created the default Thunderbird profile in the Profiles directory. I would then copy the contents of the existing Thunderbird profile into the new one. This allowed Thunderbird to be fully operational with all accounts and filters working, requiring no further setup.

In version 140, I have followed the same process. While I do see all of the email accounts, they are not functioning.

Any advice on how to do a migration with Thunderbird 140 version?