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Thunderbird won't retrieve POP3 emails from Gmail.

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When I turn my computer on in the morning Thunderbird will no longer retrieve the messages that have come in to Gmail during the night. It doesn't matter whether the messages have been read on Gmail or not. After Thunderbird is up and running then it will retrieve any new messages that come in. Get messages doesn't work at all. Get new messages connects but says there are no new messages. Thunderbird used to retrieve all new messages automatically.

When I turn my computer on in the morning Thunderbird will no longer retrieve the messages that have come in to Gmail during the night. It doesn't matter whether the messages have been read on Gmail or not. After Thunderbird is up and running then it will retrieve any new messages that come in. Get messages doesn't work at all. Get new messages connects but says there are no new messages. Thunderbird used to retrieve all new messages automatically.

All Replies (10)

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You may be seeing the bug where POP accounts are not getting new mail at startup:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1584060

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1584861

There are a few suggestions in the reports to fix it.

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Thanks for your response. I clicked on the links that you shared and then on the debug.patch attachment but what opened from there was just a bunch of gibberish to me. Should I be able to download the debug patch to fix the problem? If so, how?

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I have Thunderbird version 68.5

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No, the patch isn't intended for users, but setting another account as default may help, as the original problem is sometimes caused by Local Folders being set as the Default account.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1584861#c40

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My default account is set to 'Inbox for this account'. Is that what you mean by "Local Folders"?

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The default account is the underlined one at the top of the left pane in Tools/Account Settings. The default is set with Account Actions at the bottom of the left pane, and it must be a mail account, not Local Folders, which is a 'special account' for storing mail on the local computer.

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Under Account Actions 'Set as Default' is grayed out.

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Had my business account set as default so changed it to my personal email. Guess that could mean that I won't get my business emails now. Get Mail button still doesn't work.

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You can change the default back to your business account, as the point of switching was to possibly fix the startup bug. Use F5 to get mail for the current account, or Shift+F5 to get mail for all accounts.

Note that if you have gmail POP accounts set up on multiple devices or apps, you can't download mail unless 'recent mode' is enabled.

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I appreciate all of your ideas but unfortunately nothing has worked.