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A search showed that others have experienced this same error message, but as far as I can tell, they all were unable to access their email. These messages began appearing about a month ago. They pop up in Troubleshooting Mode. They did not in Windows Safe Mode. AVG and ZoneAlarm are not the culprits.

Greetings.

For many years I have used Thunderbird to send and receive mail through my Outlook account (while happily donating to Mozilla).

A few months ago, every initial attempt to send a message abruptly started to fail, generating the dreaded notice that “the message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) smtp-mail.outlook.com timed out.”

What is odd is that if I keep trying to send, the message always goes out eventually -- sometimes after only two tries, sometimes after ten tries.

Thus, my Outlook account works, my Thunderbird settings work, the SMTP server works -- but only at random intervals.

The problem has continued through several Thunderbird updates, including the current one (147.0.1). I tried changing the server to smtp.office365.com and got the same performance.

I am on MacOS 15.4 and am not running any third-party antivirus or firewall product.

My thanks to anyone who has insight into this problem.

Why did retrieving messages suddenly stop. It was working yesterday and I made no changes to anything. I can send successfully. I am using Shaw/Rogers Pop server.

Why does "test connection to server" fail?

I have been using Thunderbird for quite a few years and all of the sudden I have been receiving the message below yesterday and it's still continuing with this error:

Connection to sever imap.gmail.com timed out

I have not changed any settings Tried all the different suggestions found online (checking port numbers, taking off anti virus, worked in troubleshoot mode, even un-installed Thunderbird and then re-installed, etc)

The problem is still happening. Not sure if anything was changed on the back end of Thunderbird but I cannot receive or send emails at this point.

Please advise. Thanks!

Hi! If I click a link that is meant to redirect somewhere else (and I know that they do that properly on other browsers so it isn’t an issue with the links themselves because I recently switched and they worked fine) it doesn’t work. For example, if I click on a link to a news article through a post on X/Twitter,rather than redirecting to the site, Firefox just stays on a page that says “A server with the specified hostname could not be found“. I’ve looked at the settings in the Firefox app and haven’t found anything that solves this but I hope there’s just something I’m missing because it’s very frustrating

This just started 4 or 5 days ago ( 2026.1.23 ish). I did not update TB nor make any changes to the account in question (that I'm aware of). The errors show up every few minutes, with a 'beep' sound and notification pop-up showing up each time - is very annoying.

I was running v145 when it started. I saw there was an update to 147 and installed that; same issue. I restarted TB into Troubleshooting mode and am still getting the error.

This is running on MacOS 15.7.3. Hardware is MacMini (2024) with Apple M4 chip.

Generally I still seem able to received & send emails.

I opened Activity Manager and Error Console. Error console doesn't seem to have much (using 'Multiprocess', with Errors, Warnings, Logs, Debug enabled). Activity manager shows things such as:

<my account name>

   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    09:49
   Failed to connect to server outlook.office365.com.    09:52
   Authentication failure while connecting to server outlook.office365.com.    09:58
   Authentication failure while connecting to server outlook.office365.com.    10:03
   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    10:10
   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    10:14
   Connection to server outlook.office365.com was interrupted.    10:20

There was an error or log entry that I was able to find a few days ago that made me think it was Calendar related, but now I'm not finding that message.

My Thunderbird will not connect to the Comcast/Xfinity email account with the same settings that Outlook connected to and downloaded all my emails and my inbox structure. I believe this is either a battle between Comcast and Thunderbird or a big glitch in this application, My Gmail, Outlook365, work fine in Thunderbird, not Comcast. This started about a week ago. Has anyone found a solution?

Hi, all experienced peoples are here I got strange issue with firefox lately. my site sometimes https://avsogirl.net/ not loads at all, just shows “server not found” look at the image.

i first thought maybe server down, but i checked with curl and ping, server responds fine. also tested same site in chrome and edge, loads normal there, no error. i tried clearing cache, disabling addons, even fresh profile. still same. only firefox gives this dns error.

i use dns-over-https in firefox, and i also have proxy config for work. maybe firefox handling dns/proxy different? when i switch off doh, sometimes page loads, sometimes not. so looks like firefox network stack problem, not site issue. anyone else facing same error?

When in e-mail I get a message concerning not being able to connect I MAP settings as there are too many or something like that. (Message disapears quickly). It indicating that I should use advanced I MAP settings - all of which is way beyong my primative knowledge. Anyone throw any light on this regarding what and how to do or who to contact Thank you . Bernard

I have two accounts hooked to thunderbird, my work account that uses google workspace and my personal gmail account. Today, my work account went totally crazy, and it's loading emails in my inbox at a snails pace. Meanwhile, my personal gmail account loads fine. I did literally everything. I deleted and restored the accounts, then I deleted the Thunderbird app and all the library folders on my mac that had thunderbird (maybe I missed some?) Then I reinstalled Thunderbird and connected everything again. Same result. Personal Gmail imap works great. Work gmail with google workspace is incredibly slow and won't load in my inbox.

Before reinstalling i did everything, cleared cache, compacted folders, changed to not have messages stored locally. What could I be doing? Is google workspace imap having trouble?

I installed the latest Thunderbird version last week, is this a version update problem? After a full reinstall of everything, I'm totally confused now. I've gone through my settings 10 times and spent 8 hours on this today. I used chatgpt to guide me and try different things. I'm stumped, please help. I'm a donor that supports Thunderbird!!! I've used it since 2008. 147.0.1 (aarch64) Release notes

HTTPS pages are no longer loading. Everything works fine in Microsoft Edge. I've reinstalled Firefox several times – the problem persists. Thank you very much for your help.

Hi,

I had to re-install Thunderbird on my computer. I had it all working until Jan. 27th when all of the sudden most of my email accounts started giving a timeout error message. I have tried numerous setting changes and combinations, rechecked by passwords and even tried uninstalling and reinstalling again. Nothing is working. The accounts affected are gmail, yahoo, and aol accounts. I shut off my anti-virus software, and okayed thunderbird for accessing these accounts. Not sure what else to try, so thinking maybe it was a change with the mail servers and how they let thunderbird access them. Are they now denying the use of third party servers.