SSL is the connection security, not authentication. But long ago I recall TWC required SSL/TLS security but on port 587, not the standard 465. Type in the 587 first, then select SSL/TLS.

yes, that’s exactly what I have had during all of these settings; namely 587 and SSL

Did you ever try STARTTLS on 587, despite what Spectrum support says?

I might not have been clear earlier, but I tried it both ways so yes, I did try STARTTLS

So what does any of this mean for us who can not send emails? We both have the settings where they should be and nothing changed that would disrupt anything. And we can still send emails directly on spectrum and frontier's web mails. Getting desperate here

Agree with. Lisa's comments entirely. What are we to do? Decades using Thunderbird and even making some financial contributions and now we're stuck? I tried using the spectrum. Net Webmail app which would allow me to keep my wi.rr.com. email address and can report that it is absolutely awful to use. Slow not user-friendly difficult in part. We so want to use Mozilla Thunderbird but what good is it? If you can't send out messages only receive them. we appreciate the assistance. Some of you have offered to date and thank you so much for your time. Unfortunately, none of the suggestions have come to a fruition as far as bringing back her ability to send messages. I would like to blame Spectrum entirely but considering lisa has a different provider yet is experiencing the same thing as I am it has to be something glitchy with Thunderbird. is there anyone else that can think outside the box with some alternative suggestions? We would truly appreciate it.

Agree with. Lisa's comments entirely. What are we to do? Decades using Thunderbird and even making some financial contributions and now we're stuck? I tried using the spectrum. Net Webmail app which would allow me to keep my wi.rr.com. email address and can report that it is absolutely awful to use. Slow not user-friendly difficult in part. We so want to use Mozilla Thunderbird but what good is it? If you can't send out messages only receive them. we appreciate the assistance. Some of you have offered to date and thank you so much for your time. Unfortunately, none of the suggestions have come to a fruition as far as bringing back her ability to send messages. I would like to blame Spectrum entirely but considering lisa has a different provider yet is experiencing the same thing as I am it has to be something glitchy with Thunderbird. is there anyone else that can think outside the box with some alternative suggestions? We would truly appreciate it.

I agree. Was hoping to getv through the weekend and magic would happen.... it did not and I still can not send emails from thunderbird. Have you been able to? Or find work around?

You won't find any help from Spectrum because they really want to get entirely out of email -- they have stopped doing email for new non-business customers about two years ago. For right now existing customers can keep their legacy email accounts, but their so-called support told me bluntly that Spectrum has decided to pull the plug on email, they just haven't decided how soon, but his guess was in about a year.

Spectrum has that legacy support page that everyone keeps linking to -- too bad that the settings Spectrum says to use don't exactly match what Thunderbird has.

If you let Thunderbird try to set up your legacy TWC account it gets all the settings wrong -- clearly showing that no one at Mozilla even looked at Spectrum. I tried Thunderbird about a decade ago and I didn't like it as much as Microsoft Live Mail -- which I am still using successfully with Spectrum. Today I decided to try Thunderbird again because I wanted an email client that would work with both Spectrum and Gmail. Thunderbird works with Gmail, but it has been a nightmare trying to get it set up for Spectrum. You absolutely need to use manual settings.

By manually entering the settings that spectrum says to use, I can get Thunderbird to download my email but it won't send email but don't work for the outgoing email.

The settings for my legacy TWC.com email account on Spectrum should be IMAP incoming server (IMAP) mail.twc.com Port 993 requires SSL outgoing server (SMTP) mail.twc.com Port 587 requires SSL log in using clear text authentication my server requires authentication the username is the full email address

Those settings work for the incoming email in Thunderbird, but not for outgoing email. I have tried setting the connection security to SSL/TLS (which seems to be what Spectrum says to use) I have tried setting the connection security to STARTTLS (which was suggested here) I have even tried setting the connection security to None (which is the only other choice) NONE of them work.

I have tried setting the authentication Normal Password (which is what Spectrum says to use) I have tried setting the authentication to Encrypted Password - but that gets me an error message telling me the server doesn't support encrypted passwords and telling me to set it to normal password. I tried No Authentication - of course that didn't work. I even tried the other two strange choices -- of course they didn't work either.

There is no chance of help from Spectrum -- they absolutely don't support email clients and barely support their webmail system.

This thread looked like the best hope for support for Thunderbird, but it seems that zbadger and I are the only people here who have ever actually tried to use Thunderbird on Spectrum and all we know is that it receives but won't send email.

Thanks for your reply. The only thing that I would disagree with is the you and I are not the only ones with her this problem there are many and I know some people who have just walked away from Thunderbird as a result of this and gone to Gmail. I’ve always liked Thunderbird as the best way to layout my emails. But this puts me in a real bind because Spectrum has such a monopoly in our area that it may force me away from Thunderbird. Currently, I am receiving emails in Thunderbird and Gmail, but I’m only responding now out in Gmail and people are not always pleased that I’m using two different email utilities. But the Thunderbird group has not come up with a solution despite initially trying to help. It’s it’s been silence for a month since.

When I said you and I are the only people here who have ever actually tried to use Thunderbird on Spectrum, I meant we were the only ones HERE with the problem. The other people who have joined this thread either have a different problem (yahoo) or are trying to help without having any direct access to the problem (they aren't TWC users, or even Spectrum users).

I appreciate them trying to help, but all they can do is read the Spectrum website and suggest we try that.

The concept of support by the user community seems great -- more eyes on the problem should mean that someone else could have an answer. But community support doesn't work for specific problems.

There is no one else here who can even see the problem, so it looks like it is up to us to either find a solution or find some other program to use instead of Thunderbird. Of course, our problem is going to go away when Spectrum finally pulls the plug on their "legacy" email.

Meanwhile I'm trying to make some sense of Thunderbird. I just installed the program yesterday and it seemed to be working (other than not being able to send mail on TWC). This morning I started Thunderbird only to be treated to it asking me for the password again on each of my TWC accounts and saying it couldn't connect, then popping up some error message about not connecting to gmail. I checked and found that TWC still works in both netmail and Microsoft Live Mail -- by the time I got back, I found that Thunderbird had downloaded my mail from the same accounts that it said it couldn't connect to. So far Thunderbird isn't impressing me very well.

EDIT: SURPRISE I was reading my mail in Thunderbird and I came to an email that I needed to forward, I guess I wasn't thinking because I just went ahead and clicked to forward it -- Thunderbird sent it successfully from my TWC account. I'm going to have to do some testing to verify that it sends from each of my TWC accounts, but it is sending from at least one of them.

Now if I could just figure out how the "Unified Folders" are supposed to work, I might even get to like Thunderbird.

EDIT 2: three twc accounts work for sending -- three twc accounts with the exact same settings don't work.

A common issue when there are multiple accounts on the same provider happens if the accounts are not set to send on separate smtp servers, which have the same settings except for User Name.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1350593

Unfortunately according to user reports some many service providers are just problems, in many cases with poor support as you point out. Perhaps that tends to be the case with many large nationwide/global providers?

I don't have much first hand experience with many alternatives - but can say my cable provider of 15 years has been absolutely fantastic, and more recently for two years of fastmail has also been first rate.

Some general ideas in this search.

Also, MZLA (who provides Thunderbird) will soon have email services. See https://tb.pro/

A common issue when there are multiple accounts on the same provider happens if the accounts are not set to send on separate smtp servers, which have the same settings except for User Name. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1350593

OK, I read the "Chosen solution" -- it took several tries back and forth between that post and Thunderbird trying to make any sense of what they were trying to describe. Perhaps Thunderbird has changed somewhat in the five years since that post or maybe I'm just not seeing it the same way. The "Chosen Solution" is to have a different description for each outgoing server. My accounts that were working and my accounts that aren't working all had the "description" field empty in the Edit Outgoing Server window, which is different from the list of outgoing servers. I tried this "solution" by adding a different brief description for each SMTP server but that didn't make any difference to which accounts work and which don't

Testing this is difficult because Thunderbird takes forever to decide an SMTP server has timed out. And because I'm not familiar with the weird way that Thunderbird displays the mail. WTF is "correspondent"? Sometimes it is the sender, sometimes it is the addressee. The "unified folders" aren't really unified (the "unified" inbox does not show the contents of all the inboxes) BUT MOST TROUBLESOME, thunderbird will eventually time out and say that a message wasn't sent; but then sometimes that message has already been received by the time Thunderbird gives up trying to send it.

While typing this I tried sending an email from one of my TWC accounts to another of my TWC accounts. Thunderbird spent the whole time showing that it was trying to send the message then eventually gave up. By the time that it gave up trying to send the message -- that message had already been received.

Some of this may be some sort of Spectrum problem but troubleshooting it is nearly impossible. Spectrum refuses to support email clients, Thunderbird has only community support, and I'm trying to figure out what Thunderbird is SUPPOSED to do at the same time that I'm trying to troubleshoot a problem.

My TWC accounts are each sending mail -- at least for now

I can't be completely sure but I think it was mostly a problem between Spectrum and Thunderbird rather than actually a setup problem.

You can increase or reduce mailnews.tcptimeout in Settings > Config Editor from the default of 100 = seconds the application waits for a server response before timing out.

You can increase or reduce mailnews.tcptimeout in Settings > Config Editor from the default of 100 = seconds the application waits for a server response before timing out.

Are we even talking about that same program?

Thunderbird waits well over 5 minutes before timing out when trying to send an email, several times longer than just 100 seconds.

I looked in settings and there is nothing called Config Editor and Thunderbird's search in settings tells me "Sorry! There are no results in Options for tcptimeout."

If there is a way to change the timeout, it isn't available from 'Settings"

tcptimeout isn't found in Settings.

In Settings > General scroll to the bottom to find and click on Config Editor. It is there that you look for tcptimeout.

You might see 5 minutes because of multiple attempts.

tcptimeout isn't found in Settings. In Settings > General scroll to the bottom to find and click on Config Editor. It is there that you look for tcptimeout. You might see 5 minutes because of multiple attempts.

Aha! Found it, thanks. I don't understand why Thunderbird didn't find Config Editor when I entered that in the settings search box, but it was at the bottom. I took the 100 down to 60 which is what I've been using for years in other programs.

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what the timeout discussion has to do with the original question about the inability to send emails out.

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what the timeout discussion has to do with the original question about the inability to send emails out.

zbadger, timeout might not have anything to do with your issue. But it might for n4aof.

For this reason, and others, I suggest that z4aof create a new question using https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new/thunderbird/form - three people in one question can get quite confusing.