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

inbox does not display messages

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by dan75

more options

I was attempting to change the view on how threads were displayed when I discovered that I can no longer view emails in my inbox. Messages arrive and the total number increases in count, but clicking on the inbox icon nothing is there. Upon closing and opening Thunderbird, the Thunderbird Welcome screen is visible, click on sent or trash and then back to inbox, nothing there.

I was attempting to change the view on how threads were displayed when I discovered that I can no longer view emails in my inbox. Messages arrive and the total number increases in count, but clicking on the inbox icon nothing is there. Upon closing and opening Thunderbird, the Thunderbird Welcome screen is visible, click on sent or trash and then back to inbox, nothing there.

All Replies (4)

more options

Do you know what you changed?

There are several things that might hide messages.

First check you have View|Folders|All

Make sure the QuickFilter Bar buttons are all un-selected.

If you have the Mail Views tool on the toolbar, make sure it is set to All.

Try dragging your mouse over an apparently empty listing. Sometimes (I don't know how) people get invisible white text on a white background, so the messages are there but invisible. Selecting them inverts and highlights them.

more options

I found out what changed using your suggestions. Under View..Threads, ALL was not selected, clicking on that the Inbox messages were visible.

Which brings me back to what I was originally trying to accomplish, how do set Threads so that messages received are visible immediately if they on a thread. Currently if a message is received on a thread, I have to hunt to find it. Thanks for the help.

more options

I use View|Folders|Unread to quickly find folders containing new messages. And the Unread switch in the QuickFilter Bar.

Not to mention an "Unread" Saved Search folder.

Yours seems to be a common reason for folk not liking threads. I very much like having related messages filed together and collected in a conversational thread. So I use that Unread button on the QuickFilter Bar a lot.

For many users the preferred course of action seems to be to disable Threading. View|Sort By|Unthreaded, but that's too drastic for me.

more options

Thanks for the suggestions. Using a new computer and Thunderbird installation, old computer/thunderbird not the same.