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Why is thunderbird so slow to pick up mail?

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  • Last reply by Matt

lucyve
lucyve
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I am new to Windows 10. Used to use Mail app on Mac. Which was fine. My email is a gmail account - picking up via IMAP.

This morning and I've had thunderbird open for 3 hours, I have just received one email from a yahoo sender sent over 2 hours ago. One client's email comes through at different times, not always sequentially. Usually in excess of 20 minutes after they sent it! I have set the server to pick up every 4 minutes (it was 10 as default) but it's still not behaving normally.

Where do I start to debug this?

I am new to Windows 10. Used to use Mail app on Mac. Which was fine. My email is a gmail account - picking up via IMAP. This morning and I've had thunderbird open for 3 hours, I have just received one email from a yahoo sender sent over 2 hours ago. One client's email comes through at different times, not always sequentially. Usually in excess of 20 minutes after they sent it! I have set the server to pick up every 4 minutes (it was 10 as default) but it's still not behaving normally. Where do I start to debug this?

All Replies (1)

Matt
Matt
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you start by changing the timing back to 10 minutes. Reducing it to a figure less than that is really asking for trouble unless you are connected via a fiber gigabit network connection to the mail server.

Gmail offers support for the idle command in it's imap accounts with sees the server initiate the notice to the user of now mail. But these things usually simply do not work if you have short timing between mail checks.

If you are using POP, I suggest you changer to using IMAP if timing is important to you. I would also suggest you seriously consider stopping any email scanning in your anti as that often has a detrimental effect on mail arrival.