Thunderbird Support Forum

Short background: Critically low on disc space. Windows pointed out a potentially extraneous 8.5gb NS3TMP Thunderbird file. Extensive Googling convinced me it would be safe to delete this file. To be safe (HA!) I first copied it to an external drive just in case things went south. They did.

After the copy, I went back and deleted the NS3TMP file. However, much to my horror, instead of deleting 8.5gb as expected, 30.5gb got deleted. After that, Thunderbird would not start claiming my profile was missing.

I copied the 8.5gb backup file back to its original place. No joy. Same message from Thunderbird.

At this point, I recreated my profile pointing Thunderbird to my Outlook email account.

I could now sign into Thunderbird and T'bird started populating the inbox and sent folders, but only partially. Worse (MUCH worse) my critical Thunderbird local folders were nowhere to be found. I attempted several folder recovery procedures to no avail.

I confess, I do not know how Thunderbird works its magic behind the scenes. Were my local folders part of the surprise 30gb file deletion and thus gone for good? Would the original emails that had been dragged into the various folders still be sitting on Outlook's servers?

As I said, totally self-inflicted but hopeful there's a road to recovery.

Any assistance or consoling words would be much appreciated.

I'm trying to read some old emails in an account from around 20 years ago that I have kept in Thunderbird the entire time. I stopped using the account, but kept it configured as it always had been with the old email saved in it. The emails are in several folders in Thunderbird, and I can see them listed when I select a folder, but the content of most of them is now invisible. For many years I upgraded Thunderbird and they remained visible, and I naively assumed that would always be the case. I think the visibility problem happened after a Thunderbird upgrade sometime within the last few years. Strangely, a few emails are readable. I think they're the last ones I viewed before I became unable to see additional ones I select to view. I believe all the data is still there, but I don't know how to read it. In the file system, here's what my Thunderbird profile Mail directory looks like:

/Users/myMacUser/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/my-random.default/Mail account.server.name - TB Email Folder 1.sbd (empty directory) - TB Email Folder 1 (no file extension, apparently the file containing the email data. File sizes suggest they contain data) - TB Email Folder 1.msf (the index file, apparently readable) etc.

I'm using Thunderbird 115.12.2 on MacOS Sonoma 14.5. I tried several types of exports with the ImportExportTools NG extension, but it just exported zero byte or blank files for the invisible emails.

How do I read these folder data files?

Dear

Subject to the following mail addresses: gunter.peeters@scarlet.be

We keep getting the following message when sending emails. An error occurred while sending email. The mail server replied: ip 213.49.30.104 blocked for relaying spam http://www.scarlet.be/pm/?e=f53&s=r&p=213.49.30.104. Please check if your email address is set correctly in your account settings and try again.

We are able to receive emails.

Is it possible to check this out?

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards Gunter Peeters

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

"Sending of password for user joebernard@verizon.net did not succeed. Mail server pop.verizon.net responded: [SYS/TEMP] Server error - Please try again later"

^^This message comes up every time I try to send an email. It can be received outside of Thunderbird and to other addresses.

I get the pop up that includes Add Security Exception

 You are about to override how Thunderbird identifies this site.

Legitimate banks, stores, and other public sites will not ask You to do this. Location:

This site attempts to identify itself with invalid Information. Unknown Identity The certificate is not trusted because it hasn’t been verified as issued by a trusted authority using a secure signature.

 Permanently store this exception

I am in Australia and Optus is my email provider. They have checked all is working at their end and suggest I contact Thunderbird which is why I am here.

Thanking you for trying to help

My e-mails fail to be delivered to my inbox immediately. They are held up somehow and then suddenly appear days later as a batch of them as though they have been held in a storage box.

When I restart Mozilla Thunderbird, my S/MIME certificate preferences under Account Settings seem to break.

When I initially select a certificate, both the common name/certificate name and the certificate fingerprint appear in the interface (see Working Settings.png). However, after restarting Thunderbird, only the common name/certificate name appears in the interface, and I cannot use S/MIME to sign messages (see Broken Settings.png). When I attempt to do so, I receive the following error message:

Send Message Error Sending of the message failed. You specified that this message should be digitally signed, but the application either failed to find the signing certificate specified in your Mail & Newsgroup Account Settings, or the certificate has expired.

To be clear, Thunderbird has no problem finding and using the certificate right after I set it—the problem only appears when I restart Thunderbird and the appearance of the certificate in the settings changes. The certificate does not expire until April 2025, so this is not the issue. The issue also occurs with another account using a different certificate that is also unexpired.

I am using Thunderbird 115.12.2 (64-bit ESR) on MacOS with Apple Silicon.

Hello,

My friend recently encountered an issue where he can no longer send email messages. Suddenly, all the buttons in the "Message" tab, except for "Create," became disabled. Additionally, the "Send" related buttons in the message creation window have disappeared.

I attempted to restore these buttons using Alt -> Toolbox, as suggested by similar questions. While the buttons do reappear in the toolbox view, they vanish again once I exit that view. All outgoing servers are configured correctly, and this setup has worked for several years without any problems. It seems that something is now blocking the ability to send emails.

We also tried updating and reinstalling the Thunderbird client, but nothing has resolved the issue.

Attached, you will find images of the disabled menus and proof of the correctly configured outgoing servers. Apologies for the software being in Russian; I hope it's still clear which buttons are disabled since the interface layout is the same.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated! Thank you.

Hello,

I have been using Thunderbird for many years without any issues. I recently bought a laptop running Windows 11. On this machine, I have two accounts that cannot send emails via SMTP. What is puzzling is that I can retrieve emails through IMAP without any problems.

For another account I had to use STARTTLS to get it working. But on my Windows 10 machine, the same account is sending emails correctly with SSL/TLS.

Thunderbird is allowed through the Windows firewall and is on the antivirus whitelist.

I recently fixed an issue (connecting to Gmail) by allowing cookies, so it might be a simple fix like that.

Could someone help me, please?

Many thanks!

Hi!

I realised that Thunderbird keeps deleting my messages in every account from the trash folder. I didn't change any of the settings and I checked them again - as you can see in the screenshot, the settings say to not delete messages in the trash. It's a catastrophe, because I've lost messages that I had to check again.

-> Is there any way to restore messages that Thunderbird deleted without my permission? -> Is there any way to make sure that Thunderbird does not delete messages any more?

Thank you!

Version: 115.3.1 on a Mac

We have recently moved to a new mail server. We currently have about 20 Thunderbird email clients on Windows in an office location and a macOS home machine. On all machines email is configured to use IMAP on hostname.com port 993 SSL/TLS with Normal Password and SMTP on hostname.com port 465 SSL/TLS with Normal Password.

The home machine is working 100% with no issues, it does have a much faster and lower latency internet connection than the office machines.

Many of the office machines are experiencing intermitent SMTP error messages when sending, intermitent, "unable to save mail in the Sent folder of the Inbox", messages and intermitent unable to move messages between folders.

I have checked and double checked the settings on affected machines - however, I believe a settings issue would result in nothing working, not intermitent functionality. Plus all is working fine on the home machine with the same settings (different OS, but ports and security settings all dictated by server).

With one client behaving properly, the server likwise behaving properly when addressed by the working client and the intermitent nature of the problems we are finding, I suspect we have some sort of network issue. Somthing timing out or a firewall/AV software causing a delay.

I have increased mailnews.tcptimeout on affected machines to 250 based on a forum article but this has had no effect (No idea of units here but if it is seconde then I am not supprised - the SMTP errors, when they happen are almost instantanious).

Any ideas on how to trobleshoot this problem further - The problem seems to get worse through the day, although that may just be peoples tollerance of an intermitent issue going down.

Hi,

I am running thunderbird-115.12.2-1 and Arch Linux and have the following Problem:

- I am using Unified Folders - Online search is disabled - If I change the view in any Unified Folder with more than 1 source folder to grouped by Thunderbird freezes and sometimes crashes - It does not matter what the sort by value is - Any time I switch from a not grouped by unified folder back to grouped by Thunderbird freezes and crashes sometimes again - The length of the freeze depends on the numbers of source folders for the unified folder. E.g. for my Inbox with 11 source folders between 5 and 10 minutes

I already tried - disable all addons - clear the disk cache - set mail.server.default.use_condstore to true - delete global-messages-db.sqlite

https://www.reddit.com/r/Thunderbird/comments/y795od/comment/jwk1kyp/

Right now the group by feature is not usable for me but makes it so much more clearer that I don't want to miss it.

Can you help me ?

Recently I've had problems with the SMTP server refusing to send my e-mails, I am still being able to recieve them however. When choosing to enter a new window the window where you should put your passwords appear and dissapear at the same time. I've never experienced this kind of problems before. I even removed the account and the smtp account and re-added them back again to see if it would help but to no avail.

I am following the article from Mozilla called Microsoft OAuth Authentication and Thunderbird in 2024. But still it won't work.

Our small business has a handful of Zoho email addresses that we use via Thunderbird on MacOS computers in our office. The computer I am using only has some of the email addresses listed in Thunderbird, and I am trying to add the rest.

Once all requested data is entered in the "Set Up Your Existing Mail Address" screen, we receive the error message: "Unable to log in at server. Probably wrong configuration, user name, or password." All of the data is correct, and I have tried this process different weeks to see if the issue will clear on its own, but no. I've attached a screenshot of the error message.

I have tried this with several pre-existing email addresses and it's giving me the same message, although it did allow me to add one address recently. That newly added, previously existing address is now somewhat accessible via Thunderbird, but every time we open Thunderbird it says "Login to server imap.zoho.com with username shipping@jadeandpearl.com failed." I can access the inbox and other folders of this account in the Thunderbird desktop app, but it is not currently showing new email.

Thunderbird version: 115.12.1 (64bit) MacOS: Sonoma 14.5

To the Mozilla Community:

I have a Posteo account and set it up successfully in Thunderbird. Emails and Calendar are both working without any issues.

However, Posteo contacts are not syncing. I used the TbSync / Provider for CalDAV and CardDAV without success. And using the Add CardDAV Address Book in Thunderbird is not working either.

Posteo Support confirmed my settings are correct. (Enter https://posteo.de:8843/addressbooks/johnexample/default in the URL field and replace johnexample with the local part of your email address. )

Any assistance that can be provided to troubleshoot and resolve this issue is appreciated.

Thank you.

--Shaun

Hi, first I've been using Thunderbird for decades and couldn't do without it -- keep up the good work! I have a keyboard shortcut bug and an icon action bug to report, as well as a text formatting suggestion. As background, I'm running TBird 115.12.1 (64-bit) on Windows 10 and have three different IMAP email accounts and a collection of local message folders that I access.

• Keyboard Shortcut Bug: I use the the filter box activated by <Ctl+Shft+K>. Everything works fine when I freshly launch TBird, but after some variable length of time after switching between various apps and activities, when I return to TBird I find that <Ctl+Shft+K> does not switch focus to the filter box. In this state, typing a search string gets lost. I can manually select the filter box and enter a search string, but the keyboard accelerator is not functional. It does not repair itself until I relaunch TBird. I have tried unsuccessfully to isolate events outside of TBird that bring this on.

• Icon Action Bug: I also use the inbox selector icon and a similar problem happens after extended external session activities, but not necessarily coincident with the filter box problem. The inbox selector icon stops functioning to display the new input mailbox folder being selected -- it keeps the previously selected folder in the mailbox window. To switch to another folder, I have to manually open the folder sidebar menu and select the folder I want to display. Again, I have not been able to pin down what causes this to happen. It resets to normal function when I reload TBird.

• Text Formatting: Before the upgrade to SuperNova, when composing/editing a message, I could select disjoint strings (using <ctl>select) and have text formatting options (like text style) apply to each of the selected substrings in parallel. Now with SuperNova, when I select disjoint strings, the text formatting option applies only to the first selected substring. This makes complex text formatting very tedious because I have to sequentially select the substrings and apply the formatting commands. Please restore the previous ability of reformat multiple selected disjoint strings.

Thanks again for your outstanding work on improving TBird!

Regards, Tom Rindfleisch <tcr@stanford.edu>

I have been unable to receive eMails from my internet provider (Optusnet) in Australia for sometime now. I keep getting a "Time Out" message from Thunderbird. I am using the latest version of Windows 11 on my PC.

I have spoken to Optus and confirmed that I am using the correct IMAP (Port 923) and SMTP (Port 25) settings. Is it possible to fix this in the settings menu. Or is this an Optus security issue that they are currently working on.

Kind Regards,

Jay Robertson