r/Thunderbird

Hello everyone. I am a student and as such I have a Google account issued by my university, and over the holidays, the university temporarily disables the account to re-enable it in autumn, so ever the summer I get continuous error messages asking me to re-enter credentials for the account I know will not work because it has been disabled for some time. Is there a way to disable this message for one of the Thunderbird accounts, or do I have to put up with it/remove it just to add it later?

I've been running Thunderbird for years and the other day I caught myself wondering why I never actually left. Every so often I test-drive something else. Tried the new Outlook, messed with Gmail's web setup for a month, even a couple of the newer clients people keep hyping. I always end up back here within a week.

For me it comes down to a few things. Local storage, so my mail isn't hostage to whatever some company decides. Point it at any IMAP account and it just works. Filters that do exactly what I tell them instead of some "smart" sorting I never asked for. And nobody nags me to upgrade to a plan.

But I'm more curious about people who've stuck with it way longer than I have. What's the actual reason you stay on Thunderbird instead of moving to Outlook or Gmail? One killer feature, the add-ons, or just habit at this point?

And the other side of it: what do you still wish it did? For me the mobile situation feels half-baked and threading gets messy on big mailing lists. No idea if that's just my setup or something everyone runs into.

Not trying to start a client war. I just genuinely want to know what makes people stick with this thing after all these years.

Hi all, I really like thunderbird, however, I often don't see attachments in incoming mail due to the fact that attachments are displayed at the bottom in the mail view mode.

Is there an option to move the attachments bar to the top, so that it is displayed between the subject and the mail text (similar to Microslop outlook)

Thanks and BR

Lately, I've noticed that TBird has been not loading any emails into my MS360 account until I click on the Inbox for that account. That is; the Inbox remains dormant, not highlighted, no sign of activity, no emails are loading, when in fact several are waiting. This is true even if I left the inbox open and an existing message selected while clicking out to work on something else. The app is not minimized; I can see other accounts receiving emails, their Inboxes go bold and a circle with the number of new emails appears next to it. The emails will not load even after hours of waiting, I discovered to my chagrin.

When I click on the inbox for that account, all the waiting emails load. So its not a matter of the account not working per se. The messages appear suddenly, all at once, as if they were received, but the page did not update.

I am running Windows 10 on an HP ZBook. As always, I verify the problem on another computer that has an identical setup, albeit an older model ZBook. The problem occurs on my backup computer also.

I saw that there was a separate issue with MS accounts that was patched in the latest update. My problem was happening while using V. 150. I have updated to V. 152 and the problem persists.

Any insights would be appreciated.

I've always used the native email client on my Mac, but they've taken away the ability to work offline in Mail. My work email requires a VPN, which I don't want to run all of the time.

So, if I'm using my computer with no VPN, my email consistently errors out. Even if I disable the account, there's still something in the background checking for new email, and then erroring out. I used to just click on the mailbox and then select "take account offline." That is no longer even an option. To prevent it from checking for new messages, I would have to delete the mailbox completely. That's not something I want to do every time I need to use my own computer for personal use.

I'm thinking of switching to Thunderbird as my email client, which I have to get permission to do for that account... I wanted to find out before I jump through too many hoops if Thunderbird still allows you to work with an account offline?

(New) Outlook pushed me beyond my limit. I installed Thunderbird. My impressions and implicit requests follow. I shall neither gush nor herd precious cats, because I loathe cats.

Predictably, as with most FOSS efforts, the fundamentals seem solid, technically elegant, and intuitively work as expected. Some consistency with Firefox offers welcome familiarity. There's a prevailing attitude behind this. The same attitude is behind my gripes. A kind of (FOSSy or Apple-esque) superiority that ironically resolves itself into luddism. Yes, it might be better. But the world does not revolve around you. Lamentably, it revolves around Microsoft. And that will never change without devoting attention to persuasion.

That means making it look and feel nice. Thunderbird is lacking in both, sometimes badly.

FONTS.

There are several posts and people whinging on this topic.

My take. Inability to control the recipient's rendering is no defence of assumed rightness.

I have spent hours setting the available config (General and Composition) parameters and sending emails to myself and reading them. All on the same device running Win10.

a) When I view them in webmail, they look just about OK but the font's a bit smaller.

b) When I view them in Outlook, they look just about OK but the font's a bit bigger.

--> When I view them in Thunderbird, font and size barely resemble either of the above.

--> When I compose them in Thunderbird, likewise. Ever heard of WYSIWYG? It matters.

There should be no differences between what I see when I compose an email in Thunderbird, and what I see when I read that received email in Thunderbird, webmail, and Outlook. Same font, colours, and size (give or take scaling).

READ/ COMPOSE.

--> Why do I have various options allowing an email to be read in situ (reading pane) yet when I want to compose an email, I have to do it in a new window? Quaint. Inconsistent. And ugly.

--> When I want to open an email to read, why must I double-click on it? Neither Outlook nor webmail behave like this anymore. One click (or tap) and the email is displayed.

There should be configuration options to provide the above single-click opening and in-situ composition behaviour.

DARK MODE.

It's the new black. And only in Thunderbird does it change my coloured text to white for rendering on a dark background. Someone couldn't be bothered to do it right. This is just plain lazy.

Effort should be committed, however painstaking and boohoo boring, to make Thunderbird's dark mode look beautiful and of equal sophistication to Outlook.

Microsoft and others have dug half their graves with recent strategic f-ups. With a little effort, FOSS can finish what they began. There has never been a greater appetite. But it will pass once people acquiesce to the enshittification. There is a moral argument for devoting attention to these matters. Make it look and feel nice, and painless to use.

Please, stop fellating around with "Account hub" and pay attention to the small things. The inability to set the colour of the "Sent" icon. The vertical chasm between folders. The superfluous but enormous "Search" box colonising the top of the screen. The shambolic counter-intuitive low-lighting of what's clicked upon and thus highlighting of what's just lost focus. The aesthetics are just naff. With a little attention to detail, Thunderbird could steal so many who are ready to dump Microsoft in a dumpster and sit on the lid.

NB. the solutions required to fix some or all of the above cannot be delivered solely in CSS because CSS cannot do logical processing.

If I move an email from a local folder (or a pop account folder) to an imap gmail account folder (completely different gmail account), that email will sync with gmail and 'magically' appear on the gmail website.

I was able to do this very well for one folder with almost 3,000 emails, but another folder with less emails only moved a few and then stopped. I tried closing/re-opening tbird but no luck. Have a 'crashed' the system, could google be flagging me for doing this, some other issue...?

Is there a better/different way to do what I'm trying to do (which is move emails from local folders to the actual gmail website, of a different gmail ID)?

Thank you.

i'm currently trying to import my desktop's settings onto my phone using the "export to mobile" qr code. the thunderbird app is not reading the qu code. using a normal qr code reader, i can extract the data as text but even when making that a txt, thunderbird cant read it when i try to make an import through a file. I have multiple QR codes due to me having a lot of different E-Mail-Accounts, so i was really hoping to do it this way.

My Desktop Version is 152.0.1 (64-Bit)
On my Phone, Google Play is showing the Version 20.0, i'm using an Android device.

Am i doing something wrong? Is there a workaround?

I've been using Thunderbird for like forever. For longer than that I've had a Yahoo Mail account. It's never been a problem. Until now. I now get that "Edge: Too Many Requests" blank popup when trying to get the mail. Worst, I actually have two Yahoo Mail accounts. One I only use as the recovery account for the first one. Which I just had to use to get into Yahoo Mail with the browser and it had to send a code to let me login. The problem is that second account worked fine two times and now it also has the "Edge: Too Many Requests" popup. What?

So I searched and tried the recommended things. The first was to try to create a new account. That didn't even work once. Since the first time I tried to get message that popup happened. I tried the app password thing, same popup. I've tried leaving it alone in Thunderbird for a while to let it calm down. So far, I still get the popup.

I see that most people say it's a Yahoo problem and has nothing to do with Thunderbird. Either it's a mail server problem or a OAUTH2 problem. That doesn't seem right to me. Since using another email client, everything works fine. It's even another Thunderbird email client, K-9. So if it is a Yahoo mail server problem, why does it work just fine with that?

Other than keep waiting, people have said that it just starts working again after a while, I'm at a lost of what to do. Did I miss anything? Has anyone else had this problem in the last few days?

I cannot for the life of me figure this out.

I've set my default compose font to Variable Width. Earlier today, it was composing emails in Sans-Serif, good. But later today it started composing in Serif instead, even though I didn't make any changes to fonts?

I'm on Arch Linux.

EDIT: This is a bug. I've filed one here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2052041

Running TBird 140.12.0esr on a Macbook running Tahoe 26.5.2

I've got a decade of email in my mailbox which I find occasionally useful, and I'd like to shrink the storage I'm using.

I understand I can archive folders onto a NAS, but to do it I need to add a folder under 'Local Folders' so I can set it as the archive target.

My understanding is:

Open Account settings;
In the left pane, scroll down to Local Folders;
RIght-click on Local Folders - a should be prompted to 'add folder'
Add folder pointing to NAS folder'
Set Archive to 'other' and point to archive folder in Local folders.

My problem is that I can't get Local Folders to behave and let me create a new folder under it.

Which suggests that my instructions are incorrect...

Who's done this successfully - and how?

... although I'm not sure it is related to it being an Exchange account.

I received three emails on the same thread, and initially the second email displayed properly: It showed that it was from "Mr. B" in the group, had his own email content in the body. But at some point after the third email appeared - "Mr. C" replying to "Mr. B" - selecting that email no longer showed the second message, but the reply to that message. The correspondent column showed Mr. B as the sender, but the email clearly shows Mr. C's reply.

Somehow the client has linked the wrong email to that email link (so to speak). I have restarted, it does not correct. I check the account on another computer and it does NOT have the anomaly.

I have had this happen in the past, to a much greater degree in that multiple emails were displaying the wrong email in the window. At that time I deleted and re-installed Thunderbird.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or have a clue how to correct it?

ADDITIONAL: Its now happening on the other computer, though not to the same emails. Sometimes the email just appears totally blank. It seems that it only happens to emails received while TBird is on.

It does not show up in the online account. This is an IMAP account so the files should be re-synching all the time; but maybe the client doesn't know that there's a problem. Is there some way to force TBird to re-download a particular email from the server?

Hi,

After more than 2 years with this issue, changing things in numerous files, Advances Settings and so on, I finally solved it today.

For those who have this issue, who can't open links, with Thunderbird asking you what application it has to use, but no suggestions, all you have to do is to install:

• xdg-desktop-portal

And, according to you environment:

• xdg-desktop-portal-gnome (Gnome)
• xdg-desktop-portal-kde (KDE)
• xdg-desktop-portal-xapp (Mate, XFCE…)

You get the idea.

It's weird that those packages are not installed by default, let me now if this solves your issues too, so everybody can finally enjoy using Thunderbird again!

Best regards,

I have a few email accounts. One is for those I don't really trust. The next one is for all my financial institutions.

Come to find out, if I send and email with the 1st account, IT sends not only THAT email as a "From" email, but ALSO my 2nd accounts email. AND, it is save as going OUT from the 2nd email.

WHY would you expose the email I want protected and private like that?

Yah, THANKS A LOT!

https://preview.redd.it/zd117v07g0ah1.jpg?width=377&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=19cd8a7001017b399a9b39d161166386ae7bb0bf

About a month ago, I wrote a post based on my initial impressions of Thunderbird: https://www.reddit.com/r/Thunderbird/comments/1tmuz7o/trying_thunderbird_some_things_i_dont_like_and/

I've done very little fiddling, and instead simply used it pretty much as was. I've removed the card view in favour of a top/bottom split with a more 'outlook' like appearance, and i added icons in the title bar. I seldom use the default reply/fwd/delete etc buttons on the mail itself. I find that when i'm reading emails, my mouse stays in the email list, rather than drift toward the email content itself. Which is why i am not a fan of the default placement of such buttons.

As even a dev was receptive to my previous feedback, i figure it's time for a little more :) And it's more positive this time :)

• The lack of 'minimise to tray' and 'start minimised' is probably the only thing that i really really would like to see. After a month, i STILL mouse down to the notification area expecting to be able to click the program. Also, it is a bit annoying having email open all the time when i'm alt-tabbling around. For my mind, this is the single biggest gripe i have with Thunderbird. P.S. when you do get this operational, please include the option to show or hide the number of unread emails. Sometimes, knowing you have unread emails is distracting. Right-click options for 'mute notification' and 'hide unread stats', one shouldn't need to go into settings to turn them on/off.
• In a thread, the new email is down the bottom. I have to expand the thread, then click on the newest email. This makes sense, especially if there's multiple new emails. When there's only one new email, it seems weird. But i get why it would be designed this way. I'm not sure if there's any tips for how people choose to manage this. Maybe i should just turn off threads :) Go old-school :)
• I still get confused by the way gmail handles threads, Thunderbird is easy. If i want to delete one email in a thread of 10, it does it. It's intuitive.
• I started using Thunderbird on Android and the QR code setup was awesome. However, i changed one of my provider's password after the setup, and there was no way i could change the password/be prompted in the app. I had to remove the account and re-import it. I don't mind this, but there was no indication that there was a problem. It just didn't fetch emails. It didn't tell me "incorrect credentials" or in the words of that guy in Spaceballs combing the desert: "we ain't found sh!t" :D
• A friend was deleting their Yahoo email account, and wanted a copy of all their emails. So i set up Thunderbird for him and it auto-discovered the necessary settings. That is SO GOOD! Only gotcha there is the cookie requirement for OAUTH. I don't know how common it is for people to disable or restrict cookies, but it caught him out and he had to look it up.
• Hilariously, i absolutely love the 'you have mail' sound :D It reminds me of something from decades ago.. Windows XP USB connection? Whatever it is, i love it :D
• Something i didn't expect to feel, having used webmail for so long, is the sense of relief i feel having a local copy of all of my emails. I think too often we overlook that Google or whoever can lock us out of our accounts and it's near impossible to talk to a human. If that were to happen, at least i have my years of email history saved.
• Having all of my email accounts in one interface has been fantastic, i only have two email accounts but it's perhaps a hugely underrated factor for those of us using webmail for years.
• EDIT - i forgot to add, for years i ignored calendars because it was just such a pain, Thunderbird has actually changed that habit. I love the calendar appearance and ease of use.

Thank you to the devs. I'm so glad Thunderbird was revived.

I went to donate and it wants my full name and email address. I would much prefer it if i could donate via means where my personal details are either already stored or don't need to be collected/stored (i've donated to other projects via OpenCollective, buymeacoffee, kofi, Patreon). Are there other donation pathways or must you have that info?

Hi all,

I've done a lot of searching (also on this subreddit) and I still can't find any solutions I love...

I am totally overhauling various email addresses (moving to a different email service, shifting from POP to IMAP, combining certain email addresses, etc) so I want to essentially keep around my old TB accounts, all already downloaded (via POP), to reference in the future, but totally deactivated (i.e. I don't need them contacting a server to try to get messages). It's not sufficient to just uncheck options like "Check for new messages at startup" because I want to be able to still press Get Messages without annoying errors about failing to connect old servers, etc.

I've seen a lot of proposed workarounds here and elsewhere that just don't work. Does anyone else have a smart suggestion?

The best suggestion I've seen so far is just moving old accounts to subfolders Local Folders, but I've already run into some weird issues with that (including Sent, Trashes, and other folders doubled in filesize when I dragged them to Local Folders, for reasons I can't figure out yet).