I-Thunderbird Community Forum

I want to be able to switch a large chunk of my email archive "off" so it doesn't automatically load when Thunderbird launches (and consequently is invisible to search), but then bring it back online whenever I need to search deeply.

My Local Folders weigh in at 15 Gb. When Thunderbird launches, which currently takes a few minutes, Task Manager shows it takes up 1.8 Gb of memory, which I assume includes Thunderbird code plus an index it builds of all the messages in my folders. Not only does Thunderbird slow to a crawl and sometimes freeze up and crash, but this memory load appears to be slowing down my computer as a whole.

I can remove archives from the picture manually now: I can close Thunderbird, use File Manager to move the folders I want to be invisible to a location outside of Thunderbird's ken, and relaunch Thunderbird. And then reverse the process the next time I need to perform a deeper archive search. The fly in the ointment is that moving all those tens of thousands of EML files takes time and increases the possibility of file damage each time. It seems like moving the river to fill a bucket.

Another less than ideal solution now is to maintain two copies of Thunderbird, one for current and recent mail and another dedicated to archive folders. We'd have to perform a search in both Thunderbirds to be sure we'd found all instances of something.

I'd like to be able to simply toggle a local folder's visibility within the Thunderbird user interface.

Ideally, Thunderbird would be able to remove a folder from memory when I toggled it to invisible, increasing response time on the fly. But even if I had to reboot Thunderbird to get new visibility settings to affect its RAM footprint, being able to easily toggle folder visibility would still be a huge boon.

In the user interface, I imagine Toggle Folder Visibility added to the Tools menu. This function would display a checkbox next to each local folder showing its visibility status: checked for visible (the default), unchecked for hidden. It would be necessary to click Save for Thunderbird to act on changed visibility requests. Subsequently, hidden folders would be shown dimmed in the folder tree and their contents invisible. Searches would skip over them automatically.

Your thoughts?

Juniper

I bought a new computer, when I set it up one of our email accounts populated (X@cox.net)but the other did not (Y@cox.net). We get our email through yahoo and I can find the mail in Yahoo for Y@cox.net. The emails are showing up on my phone so something is working. how do I get it to populate Thunderbird?

(PII redacted by moderator)

When I edit a Sent Email as "Edit As New Message", I usually change the subject line. I do this with the hope tthat his new message I am sending becomes a new thread. Unfortunately, it shows up as a thread under the original email, which I edited

How can this be fixed?

-- Mahesh

Hello all:

Transferring Thunderbird from the system above to the system noted above. Follow the instructions from here on the Mozilla Support page (copied both "Thunderbird" directories into the Roaming and Local destination directories. When the destination machine installation opens, it is functional (i.e. it picks up all the existing e-mail accounts, downloads new mail, etc...). The problem starts when we get to the local folders.

All of these have a date and time appended to them in the destination installation. For example, if the original folder is "Prosperity Bank" the destination folder is labeled "Prosperity Bank (2025_09_21 23_06_33 UTC)" and will not let not populate (shows no messages inside).

As I am typing this, it seems I may have identified the problem (or at least part of it). It seems the destination system install is slowly working its way through the local folders randomly (not in alphabetically order), as it seems to be slowly populating them with the old mail stored therein on the original system. It is going very slowly. Very slowly.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is it normal? Is there any way to quickly eliminate the dates now appended to the local file names? (Visually this is very annoying and I do not want to try modifying the individual folder names yet until I'm sure its populated as much as it will populate.)

Thank you for any assistance.

Larry Reese

I'm about to travel for over three weeks, and I'll be paying for internet usage by the MB most of the time. When I check messages in Thunderbird, I'd like to prevent remote content from loading - I don't need to see all those images and such during that period. The global "Allow remote content in messages" setting is already off, but I have many "exceptions", and I don't want to just delete all the exceptions and start over allowing them one by one after I get home. Ideas?

I don't want to save my password in thunderbird, I choose to enter it manually, sometimes I open thunderbird and cancel the request for it to download messages, I have it set on "not to check mail when opened". but i have to set it on check on open just to get the dialog up, other wise the get mail button doesn't work. ie: 140.7.2esr eclipes Please Help Thanks Scott

I need to know how to enter a new password. My original Thunderbird account was eliminated. My Mac was hacked and in the process of cleaning my laptop, Thunderbird was erased. Also, I have more than one email address. They were all listed and available on my original Thunderbird account. Thank you for your help. [edited email from community support forum] @fulltiltliving.com

Whenever I open Thunderbird on my desktop, I get a message that "FileLink Provider from WEBDAV is not properly configured," or something like that (hard to write it down when it just flashes on the screen for a few seconds!).

I have no idea what that means. I may have used FileLink in the dim dark past, but I don't recall what it's even for, let alone what to do about this error message, if anything.

Shall I just ignore it, or is there something I should do to resolve the matter? Thanks!

For some time now many users have actively been requesting a domain based filter in tbird's incoming mail system. Is there some reason why Mozilla considers this the ultimate sin or such? I know that with a few email accounts across different servers not all of them allow me to request the filtering from them. Why not just make an all account filter for the program that refuses to accept anything from "@digitalvoice.skin" if I enable it? It would simplify my daily mail load. I would certainly not worry too much about it deleting things I actually want that are coming in on a daily basis such as this picture:

Opened up a Microsoft Office 365 account for emails. Everything worked yesterday. Today I turned my computer on and emails downloaded. Later I tried to send an email and it gave me an error message: Enter your password for [edited]@thechartstore.com on outlook.office365.com: I re-enter the password and it still will not send. I checked to see what password is saved in Thunderbird and it is the correct one. This email is working: [edited]@mymetronet.net for correspondence via email. Thanks for any assistance.

My sent folder used to work fine. I have an IMAP account. Everything else seems to work fine. However, when I send a message now, it doesn't get put in the sent folder. The weird part is that when I look in the K-9 app on mobile, the messages are there in the sent folder. It's just in TB that it seems they aren't syncing anymore. The messages just stop on 2/14.

I did research and messed around in the settings. It is subscribed, I didn't change anything to make it not work. The messages it seems should be sent to the folder (and it seems they are, TB just won't see them). I've removed and added the account again, updated TB, restarted it, etc. Nothing worked.

Any suggestions? Has this issue happened before? If you need any more details, just let me know.

I'd like to receive Thunderbird's calendar alerts once and only once; if I'm not at my computer I don't want to keep hearing them over and over every 10 (?) minutes until manually dismissed. I haven't been able to find any setting (including in about:config) that turns on/off the repeat or sets the timeout between repeat alerts. Is it hardcoded? Or is there somewhere it can be changed? Thanks!

I successfully imported the self-signed CA certificate into thunderbird. Then I tried to import the p12 S/MIME client certificate and this error message popped up (cf. screenshot below).

However, I checked the client certificate and it seems fine:

1. openssl pkcs12 -in smime-client-certificate.p12 -info -noout

Enter Import Password: MAC: sha256, Iteration 2048 MAC length: 32, salt length: 8 PKCS7 Encrypted data: PBES2, PBKDF2, AES-256-CBC, Iteration 2048, PRF hmacWithSHA256 Certificate bag PKCS7 Data Shrouded Keybag: PBES2, PBKDF2, AES-256-CBC, Iteration 2048, PRF hmacWithSHA256

1. pk12util -l smime-client-certificate.p12

Enter password for PKCS12 file: Certificate(has private key):

   Data:
       Version: 3 (0x2)
       Serial Number: 1 (0x1)
       Signature Algorithm: PKCS #1 SHA-256 With RSA Encryption
       Issuer: "..."
       Validity:
           Not Before: Thu Feb 19 13:32:18 2026
           Not After : Sun Feb 17 13:32:18 2036
       Subject: "E=user@example.com,CN=user@example.com,
           O=example.com,ST=...,C=..."
       Subject Public Key Info:
           Public Key Algorithm: X9.62 elliptic edwards curve public key
       unknown SPKI algorithm type
       Raw:
           69:58:ee:5d:45:3f:10:d9:bb:8c:a3:b6:a5:c6:16:a6:
           53:78:65:77:73:5d:e0:6f:60:df:2c:32:f3:c2:e2:58
       Signed Extensions:
           Name: Certificate Basic Constraints
           Data: Is not a CA.

           Name: Certificate Key Usage
           Usages: Digital Signature
                   Non-Repudiation
                   Key Encipherment

           Name: Extended Key Usage
               E-Mail Protection Certificate

           Name: Certificate Subject Key ID
           Data:
               99:8a:6d:e4:ec:3a:25:5d:ad:26:a0:36:e1:da:a2:ea:
               bc:88:79:50

           Name: Certificate Authority Key Identifier
           Key ID:
               f5:6c:37:9a:37:d1:81:43:d3:54:3f:b9:33:23:85:c1:
               7e:17:73:88

           Name: Certificate Subject Alt Name
           RFC822 Name: "user@example.com"

   Signature Algorithm: PKCS #1 SHA-256 With RSA Encryption
   Signature:
       44:3a:5e:d7:44:51:f1:3c:a3:80:d8:54:f4:9c:d8:0b:
       ...
   Fingerprint (SHA-256):
       88:95:7A:DF:A5:7C:D1:E8:A5:55:A8:18:BD:BD:7D:92:1F:7D:6E:17:26:68:39:84:26:F3:F6:F3:4A:5C:56:90
   Fingerprint (SHA1):
       72:83:D0:13:C9:C9:AD:46:CA:C3:73:66:9E:79:5B:5C:3B:2E:81:47

Key(shrouded):

   Encryption algorithm: PKCS #5 Password Based Encryption v2 
       Encryption:
           KDF: PKCS #5 Password Based Key Derive Function v2 
               Parameters:
                   Salt:
                       dc:f9:bf:4a:80:e1:7c:4a:b4:f5:52:6b:9b:d5:75:ad
                   Iteration Count: 2048 (0x800)
                   KDF algorithm: HMAC SHA-256
           Cipher: AES-256-CBC
               Args:
                   04:10:0d:a4:96:03:00:2a:d5:a6:fe:d3:6c:a5:d0:12:
                   67:b3

What is going on and how to troubleshoot this issue as there is no logging about this matter into /var/log/syslog?

Environment: - Ubuntu 25.10 - thunderbird 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3

The command STAT did not work. Failure at fetching of message regarding numbers and sizes. E-postservern mailin.telia.com answered: Invalid command; Valid commands: CAPA, DELE, LIST, LAST, NOOP, RETR, RSET, STAT, TOP, UIDLorQ UIT.

I have a Hotmail account and multiple gmail accounts. When I try following your (obscure) instructions for changing passwords, the box of passwords is only for my gmail accounts. None for my hotmail.

As Hotmail is very important to me, I'd like to keep accessing it through TB but you make it tough.

I am now not receiving my Hotmail mail and as I get too much traffic 200+ msgs a day, it will build. Please send simple, direct instructions on how to find and change the hotmail password, thank you.

I have a calendar in thunderbird that synchronizes with my Synology calendar. How can I open the url, user name and password or delete the existing link to my calendar and make a new one which references my synology url etc.