Thunderbird Community Forum

Google sent me an alert about my password being compromised. I changed it. It works everywhere except Thunderbird. I've been trying over and over to update the password with no luck. I keep getting the sign in popup and that results in a 400 error message - "The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That’s all we know." I opened Saved Passwords (named Saved loging in the new popup) and I deleted all the old passwords as one of the articles said to do to get started. So far I haven't found anywhere to enter my new password to open the gmail account. I've been at this for well over an hour trying all kinds of possibilities with no success. Suggestions?

7-1-26: Problem when I updated/downloaded Thunderbird 152.0.1. When I try to open, a dialog box asks if I want to create a new profile. By mistake I clicked the "new profile button" but didn't create a new profile since I want to use my previous profile just as with past upgrades. However, I couldn't move past that screen so I closed Thunderbird. Then when I try to re-open Thunderbird, I get that same dialog box and can't move forward. What can I do? Your assistance is truly appreciated, Rick

The system was working fine. The next day, when starting Thunderbird (TB, the status line shows logging in to server but loops; no errors or messages, Thunderbird is 'locked out' spinning. I see the normal INBOX page, but logging in never completes. NO CHANGES were made to TB accounts or settings. I have re-installed TB, re-booted, but no change. I cannot check/change any of the accounts or do any further 'debugging' because TB is spinning. The server login is fine because Webmail can be used. Internet connection is fine, because browser works. 1. How can I stop TB from trying to login at start up? 2. What could/would cause this behaviour?

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Hi, I have been running low on hard disk space due to the bloated Windows 11. I have been trying to clean up Thunderbird by deleting a bunch of saved emails and compacting, but the size of my profile folder is still about 3.5 GB. I looked at all of the subfolders under my profile and found a bunch of what I think is dead storage.

Under the MAIL folder there are 4 folders for what looks like my current Local Folders and 3 older local folders. Under the IMAPMAIL folder there are 4 folders for what looks like my 2 current email addresses and 2 older unused email addresses.

I looked under the account settings for the Local Folders and the 2 email addresses and have identified the 3 out of the 8 folders that are still being used.

So my question is, is it safe to just delete these apparently unused folders?

for some reason emails move from inbox to trash by themselves. I have posted this before and did not get any help to fix this. Has anyone else had this problem. I am not very computer savvy so please if you can explain in plain language. Very frustrating. Thanks ahead of time

When I send photos from my phone to my imac inbox, same email address, or when a third party sends me a verification code, "get messages" is very slow showing results. Sometimes minutes, so I have to go through several verification attempts. The primary email account is gmail. My ISP is comcast.net. I don't know if this matters, because slow Get Messages is recent. It used to work very well

Dear community,

I'm planning to change my email provider and during the transition period I need to have the old and new accounts running concurrently. The help article states:

".....you can create additional profiles, each with their own set of account configurations, messages, etc. (Note, each profile can access multiple email accounts''.) .

but I can't see how this would work. If anyone can explain in simple terms how to achieve this, or point me to the relevant information I should be most grateful.

First, I have very limited understanding of software. I need very simple explanations.

Here's my issue. I use Thunderbird on my desktop computer. I have used the Import/Export > Options > Backup Scheduling function to backup my Thunderbird email to my USB/flash drive. I have labelled the backup folder on my flash drive "Thunderbird email backup." That folder contains numerous subfolders including: 1) calendar-data 2) chrome_debugger_profile 3) crashes 4) datareporting 5) extensions 6) ExternalMailFolders 7) Mail 8) minidumps 9) saved-telemetry-pings 10) scheduled-notifications 11) settings 12) shader-cache 13) storage.

Again, these are the subfolders created/named by the Thunderbird Import/Export backup. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THESE FOLDERS MEAN.

Here's what I want - it's actually very simple. I want to be able to see (read) my backed up email on my flash drive without using the Thunderbird installed on my computer. I want complete interaction with the backed up email without my desktop Thunderbird - or my online email account - being involved at all.

My understanding is that Thunderbird Portable is supposed to be able to allow me to do that. I downloaded Thunderbird Portable (from https://portableapps.com) to my flash drive but when I tried to access it the first thing it did was try to force me to put in my online account (POP?) information.

I don't want to do that. I just want to open Thunderbird Portable on the flash drive and have it realize that all of my backed up Thunderbird email information is right there in the same flash drive. I want it to just access and use what's right there.

I was really hoping that Thunderbird Portable would simply ask me where to look - in a very user-friendly way! - and I could tell it to go to my "Thunderbird email backup" folder on my flash drive (WHERE ALL MY THUNDERBIRD INFO IS!) and it would simply do just that and provide me with complete Thunderbird service for the backed up email.

Am I missing something? Can someone give me a VERY SIMPLE walk through to do what I would think should be a very simple thing? Thank you. Chris (6/29/26)

PS - I've read the Mozilla Support ARTICLE: Thunderbird Portable (Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition) and other portable apps as alternatives (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1285834) and it alludes in general terms to exactly what I want to do but it does not give any step-wise instructions.

In Thunderbird, when reading an eMail, if the Junk or Delete button is clicked on, that eMail gets marked as Junk or Deleted. For either of those selections, the next message immediately gets automatically opened without someone clicking for that to happen.

Our Suggestion is to change the Junk and Delete button features so that only marking an eMail as Junk and deleting it happens, without automatically opening the next eMail. Also, when deleting an open eMail, change it so that deleting it is all that happens, without automatically opening the next eMail after deleting one.

It's very odd. Normally moving an email, say from the Inbox to the relevant year's archive, takes "no time at all".

Which is true for all the mailboxes shown on the attached screenshot, EXCEPT for the four at the bottom. Moving even one message from Inbox to Yiddish can take ten seconds or longer (with the dreaded "Not Responding" occasionally). Moving something in the opposite direction is also screwy, only from those four.

I had thought that it was because they're rather large. This first started when there were just Yiddish and MSW, and I split off most of the earlier years into the archives shown. To no avail.

It's only an annoyance, but I'm puzzled about how such a thing could happen.

Also very slow tagging or untagging a message just in those mailboxes.

I currently have the following:

Mozilla Thunderbird version 152.0.1 (64-bit) installed on a Windows 11 Pro computer. Within this installation are five E-Mail accounts configured and working.

I have selected Export for Mobile.

On Android (Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra - 5G) One UI Version: 8.5 Android: 16 Kernel: 6.1.145-android14-11-33419968-abS928USQS6DZF2

Thunderbird Version: 20.0

I click on the Import Settings: Try to scan the QR Code from my laptop which says 1 of 2 QR Codes and I get nothing. No pop-ups, no approvals, it just sits there. Clicking done takes me back to the main screen.

End user here, with Thunderbird for years, now on several machines that I use. Keep getting the warning window about "ESR" change. I have no wish to re-install Thunderbird, on each machine, nor to go beyond the normal updates. Can't tell which "channel" I need to choose. Unwilling to just guess. Could re-install on all five machines, if that's truly necessary. Hope not. An explanation of the simplest way to dispose of this issue, is the help I'm looking for. I think I'm currently set to the lower case address. And arranged such that each machine updates to the current content.

I would like to set up an existing Gmail account in Thunderbird.

The following window appears: (see Image 1)

I click the next button, and the next window is: (see Image 2).

How can I sign in to Google? Perhaps in a different way?

Over the last couple of weeks, TB comes up with a message "System Integration Use Thunderbird as the default client for:" with "Email", "Custom Thunderbird links (net.thunderbird)" and "Always perform this check when starting Thunderbird" options checked.

I check set as default and get "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\uninstall\helper.exe'" and "Windows cannot find 'C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\uninstall\helper.exe'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again." (screen shots attached)

As you can see, I was just accepting the settings. not sure why it's looking for helper or to uninstall? Sorry, can't find the app menu in TB with instructions provided in the line.

Thanks!