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thunderbird fails to ask for new password when sending mail

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  • Last reply by honcho

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I changed the passwords for two email addresses within same account. When receiving mail for first address was prompted for new password and entered it. Same for second address. When sending mail from first address was prompted for new password and entered it. When sending mail from second address was not prompted for new password and get error message "Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) smtp.frontier.com timed out. Try again." Upon clicking OK error disappears and return to message window. No prompt for new password. What do I do?

Mac OS 10.10.5

I changed the passwords for two email addresses within same account. When receiving mail for first address was prompted for new password and entered it. Same for second address. When sending mail from first address was prompted for new password and entered it. When sending mail from second address was not prompted for new password and get error message "Sending of the message failed. The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) smtp.frontier.com timed out. Try again." Upon clicking OK error disappears and return to message window. No prompt for new password. What do I do? Mac OS 10.10.5

Chosen solution

Thunderbird has decided to ask me for the outgoing password. Don't know why.

In my haste I forgot to check the 'Remember Password' box, so the password does not appear in 'Saved Passwords,' but it keeps sending subsequent emails anyway. Hopefully it will ask again if it needs to.

Thank you very much.

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All Replies (4)

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1) Is your Thunderbird set to only ask for a password within X minutes? If so was this attempt for second email within said time frame?

2) Were the email passwords the same? ( bad habit but it's more common that I'd like to admit seeing in the wild.

3) How were passwords changed initially ? via a webui or within Thunderbird?

4) have you tried cp -r ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/ ~/Documents/Thunderbird and tried with a fresh instance to rule out a new config mismatch or plugin / theme /etc ?


Please find attached a screenshot of an empty error console with a look at where it is, given the reported errors yours should be loaded with content please sanitize any personal / confidential info and share the sanitized screengrab to also help troubleshooting efforts.


Get to that via the 'hamburger' (three horizontal lines) icon > Tools > Error Console.

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Got the screen shot. Working on the rest.

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Those first few ( up top) allude to an extension consider launching tbird in 'safe mode' and see if errors or issues persist. Also that very last one alludes to a local dns issue consider checking your discoveryd logs (dns resolver) and / or flushing then with:

sudo discoveryutil mdnsflushcache

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Chosen Solution

Thunderbird has decided to ask me for the outgoing password. Don't know why.

In my haste I forgot to check the 'Remember Password' box, so the password does not appear in 'Saved Passwords,' but it keeps sending subsequent emails anyway. Hopefully it will ask again if it needs to.

Thank you very much.