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Is there an option to save the sender's address into the address book automatically when replying to an email? Where is it? I think I need to turn it off!!

I have been having enormous trouble with emails from a group of people who use the same 'noreply' return address. It seems that the name of one of these people was inserted into my address book together with the 'noreply' email address. Every email received from the group over the recent past has been overwritten by that name as being the sender.

I don't know if, at some time in the past, I (accidentally?) hit the reply button triggering an update to the address book - or what else could have happened.

I found the record concerned in the address book and deleted it, which has stopped the problem. But I need to stop the problem recurring.

I've spent days trying to sort this out and am now totally confused so I do hope my explanation above is clear. Please point me in the right direction for a solution

I have made a backup of my Thunderbird profile using this method:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer

If my computer crashes I can restore my messages and settings from this backup, or if I buy a new PC I can copy the data over from a backup made the same day.

The backup contains settings and local folders, but my concern is that the backup also contains the contents of my regular inbox at the time of copying.

The contents in my inbox changes over time, so naturally it will differ from the saved inbox contents in the backup.

So what happens when I paste an older backup into the Thunderbird folder? Will this data overwrite all the contents in my inbox and basically revert the inbox to an older state? Or will my inbox be crammed with doubles?

Since I use IMAP, any changes to the messages in Thunderbird will sync to the mail server, so I really don't want to do anything that deletes things or makes a mess on the mail server.

Of course, it can be good to have a copy of my messages if the mail server crashes, but if I only need to transfer data to a new PC or restore my data after a computer crash, I would rather just download the up-to-date inbox contents from the server. At the same time, it's important to me to make this backup since I want to be able to transfer my settings and local folders.

In this case, should I remove some files in the backed up profile folder before the transfer? If so, which files? The folder structure and content of the subfolders "Mail" and "ImapMail" aren't very intuitive, with various subfolders and multiple files named "Inbox" of various sizes.

Appreciating any clarifications on the matter and help to avoid conflicts between copied/backed up profiles and my current inbox.

hi all today thunderbird stopped downloading messages from the mail server

a manual d/load doesn`t do anything

the mail is backed up on the server & i can`t get a d/load to happen ( manual or auto)

how to auto- clear the server so i don`t keep getting maibox full messages or is this the inbox on my computer that the message refers to

i keep deleting the junk files

Postbox having been sold to eM Client, I need to migrate to Thunderbird. Import worked pretty well using the protocol "migrating from a previous Thunderbird installation" however the filters did not import at all. It happens that I have 320 of them, so it would be a great help if some automatic procedure could be implemented. Is this possible? Thanks in advance. Regards, Gérald

I am troubleshooting a problem that arose after I migrated a Thunderbird mail account from an old Win10 64-bit PC to a new Win11 64-bit PC.

I installed TB on the new machine and opened the program without doing anything else, then closed the program. TB created installs.ini and profiles.ini files, both with the following as the last line:

Locked=1

This line had not been in either .ini file on the old installation.

I edited these files to point to the backed-up TB profile from the old machine, but I decided to leave the Locked=1 line in the .ini files.

Was this a mistake? I have a strange problem with the new installation, which I won't report until I understand what the "Locked=1" means, and whether I was ill-advised to leave it/them in. Fortunately there has been no evident loss of mail data.

Thanks in advance, Phil

I created a new installation, Win11 64-bit, and edited installs.ini and profiles.ini to use the profile left from a previous Win10 64-bit installation.

I get messages to the Inbox correctly, and the structure of what would be Local Folders seems intact. However, I have two problems: (1) when I try to save a message in another folder, I get a dialog saying my disk is full (there are more than 200GB available) (see image); and (2) the "Local Folders" folder looks to be in the Trash. There is also some "weirdness" in the menu when I try to move a message from Inbox (see image).

I have never tried to export from TB but if I can export the Inbox and the other folders with saved messages, I might be able to do a fresh install and then import those.

Any other ideas?

Thx -Phil

My question: is there a way to force a light TB theme and use white tab background text color?

I installed a theme add-on which I like except the associated dark theme. I want to use the theme image with a light TB theme but it appears the tab background text color determines the theme color (light or dark). This image has some darker colors and a light/white tab text looks the best, but this color seems to force a dark theme for the rest of TB (White text ->dark theme). If I change the manifest file to use a different tab background text color I can change the overall theme to light or dark. Using a darker or black tab background text color the theme changes to a light theme. Light tab background text color changes to a dark theme and darker tab background text colors forces a light them. I'm guessing there is a threshold 1/2 way between black and white text that will force the theme one way or another.

The articles I have read on this json file don't provide any examples and this is as far as I have been able to get. I'm new to both TB and modifying this json file. Any help would be appreciated

I tried installing TB on two machines with the same profile, but this did not work because I was unable to keep the versions in sync on the two machines.

Now I am back to one machine, but because of the above I was left with quite a few "zombie" Inbox and Trash folders. These are empty but they cannot be removed.

Is there a "trick" or mechanism within TB for doing so?

This is a Deb12 Linux installation btw.

Thx, Phil

I have a few e-mail addresses in Thunderbird. Something weird is happening. When I send from address A, the e-mails are getting duplicated so that the same e-mail appears in my sent file under adress A and address B. The recipient is getting the e-mail sent from address B, even though I composed and sent it from address A. Any idea what's going on and how to fix it? Thanks.

Wish for my wife's email address also to be with thunderbird rather than plusnet webmail which is ceasing in the future, and prefer both our emails to come into thunderbird

Not having used the desktop Thunderbird in a while I went through and updated passwords when prompted while trying to access emails and it downloads ok but will not send. I get an error message that states log-in to server failed but it's substituting/listing a very old email account/address that is not even list in my current account list.

I followed another thread and searched for prefs.js files and there is only one. Should I delete that or is it even the issue?

I think it started to happen with Version 128.9.0esr | Released April 1, 2025. It is very simple to reproduce: 1. Start TB. 2. TB downloads new messages and continues to do it every 1 minute according to the setting. 3. In 10 to 20 minutes, it hangs. I have to force it to close and then restart it to check my email.

I believe it started to happen yesterday.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

As of today, I can neither send nor receive email for my imap accounts - imap.gmail.com and imap.mail.yahoo.com. I have Thunderbird 128.9.1esr(64 bit). They both work outside of Thunderbird. Notification reads: Authentication failure while connecting to server ... where ... is each url above.

I know how to place the preview pane on right with the vertical layout, but I would like to switch the place of the preview pane with one of the message tray pane. In other words, I want set the panes in a orders like the folder pane, the preview pane, and the message tray pane from left to right. I do not know how to do it so I would happy if anyone teach me how.

I currently have 3 Comcast mail accounts I access from my home PC using Outlook 2016 configured for POP3. For each of the 3 Outlook accounts I designate a common PST file on my home PC. Thus when launching Outlook messages from all 3 accounts are downloaded from Comcast and stored in this one PST file. Can I configure Thunderbird to do the same?

As email threads become lengthy they become unreadable. The older emails turn into displaying one character per line. Is this a bug or something fixable on my end?

After using Thunderbird and the Calendar - synced to my Google Calendar - for many years I find myself with a new installation of Tbird on a new PC running Windows 11. I've got the calenders all setup and synced and everything, but when I try to set notifications the only choice available is "Show an alert". It also used to offer "Send an email". I want the ability to send those email notifications, not just phone alerts. I've looked through the settings and don't see anything obvious. So how do I get it to send notifications via email? Thanks, --Brian

I am an experienced TB user, but at the moment at a total loss for a solution to my problem.

I use Windows 11 Pro. When trying to click on image attachments for PNG and JPG/JPEG pictures, the behaviour is different: PNG images are displayed just fine in the Windows photo viewer, JPEG images are not. If I open the same images via double-click from the local disk, both open just fine in the same viewer. I have checked the file type settings already and even changed them to always ask me for JPEG images. I get asked just fine and see that TB wants to open the Windows photo viewer for both files types, but while it works for PNG, it does not for JPEG. There is no error message, just nothing happens, at least nothing visible to me.

When trying the same from a new user profile, it works as expected. I tried TB safe mode, deactivating all add-ons, but it still does not work in my main user profile.

I would be glad to receive hints for how to solve or at least debug this. Thanks in advance.