This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Hierdie gesprek is in die argief. Vra asseblief 'n nuwe vraag as jy hulp nodig het.

Error with email DELE and RETR commands failing (Messages are counted from 1)

more options

Thunderbird is unable to retrieve any email for me. I have received the following error:

The DELE command did not succeed. Error marking a message as deleted. Mail server mail.amazinggraceinc.com responded: messages are counted from 1

I have since tried uninstalling and reinstalling Thunderbird, creating another email address and am now receiving this error:

The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail server mail1.hostingplatform.com responded: messages are counted from 1

I'm not sure what triggered this error, but the last email that came through was marked as urgent and shortly after it, I was no longer able to retrieve emails. Please let me know what I need to do to fix this issue.

Thank you.

Thunderbird is unable to retrieve any email for me. I have received the following error: The DELE command did not succeed. Error marking a message as deleted. Mail server mail.amazinggraceinc.com responded: messages are counted from 1 I have since tried uninstalling and reinstalling Thunderbird, creating another email address and am now receiving this error: The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail server mail1.hostingplatform.com responded: messages are counted from 1 I'm not sure what triggered this error, but the last email that came through was marked as urgent and shortly after it, I was no longer able to retrieve emails. Please let me know what I need to do to fix this issue. Thank you.

All Replies (1)

more options

I have looked everywhere for any answer at all, but was unable to find even a hint! So I had to debug this myself. I am on an older Windows machine and I used Wireshark technology. First I captured all the packets between my machine and the mail server when I used 'Get Message' to try to access my mail and got the error message instead. When I examined the packets, I could see all the traffic between my machine and the mail server. After logging on, Thunderbird issued the POP command LIST. This caused the mail server to send back many messages listing an index number and I think, size of email. The numbers went from 1 to 6908, quite a few messages! But after 96 the index number was '0' instead of '97'. At 98 it continued correctly. After the LIST command result, Thunderbird commenced to issue individual DELE commands starting with DELE 1. The mail server answered each DELE command with '+OK ' . However when Thunderbird got to the next index number after 96 and issued DELE 0, the server returned the error message you see at the top of this topic. SOLUTION: The mail server staff must correct your message list at the server, by re-indexing your message list.