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

can't access Server Settings

more options

In Thunderbird when I open server settings and click on any entry I get "An account with this name already exists. Please enter a different account name". :-/

How do I see current &/or change server settings?

& I can't upload an image to you . :-/

In Thunderbird when I open server settings and click on any entry I get "An account with this name already exists. Please enter a different account name". :-/ How do I see current &/or change server settings? & I can't upload an image to you . :-/

All Replies (1)

more options

The account name is not really a server setting. It's a name used to identify each account in Thunderbird. That way you can have accounts with the same server name, and be able to identify each one in Thunderbird.

From what I understand, Thunderbird is not letting you access the settings, because there are 2 or more accounts with the same account name, so we need to change the account name outside of the account settings window. There is a way to do that. You need to use the Config Editor.

  1. Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > General, and click on Config Editor.
  2. In the Config Editor search field, type mail.server.server
  3. You'll see a bunch of preferences in bold. There is a separate server number for each account. The preferences that end with .name are the ones with the account name. Look for any .name preferences that have the same value. (If an account doesn't have a .name preference, I think the hostname is used.)
  4. Double-click on a preference to change the value.

So if you see something like mail.server.server1.name Gmail mail.server.server3.name Gmail Double-click on one of them, and change the value to Gmail-2

That should at least prevent the error from popping up, so you can make more permanent changes in the Account Settings window.