Did you take a look at the Protect your Thunderbird passwords with a Primary Password article? That would give you the option to restrict Thunderbird’s password access for your accounts without the need to change the account’s passwords themselves. You could choose to set a master password for the other 3 client computers at the office for instance and leave it out for the computer at home.

Note however that using a Master Password means the password needs to be entered when retrieving email (where a password is always needed) as well as for sending email, where a password may not be needed, depending on your account’s email authentication settings. Therefore you might not need to enter it when sending mail from home when using your own ISP in case that account needs no authentication. For computers at work for instance, retrieving email will require it, but sending may depend on what SMTP server you use there. In other words, if you set the company’s SMTP server there to send mail and do not need to use a password for that (small chance, but still), you or anyone else may still be able to send mail from your account. In that case, make sure to set the Gmail SMTP server and use authentication, as will probably be required anyway.

Also note that viewing the contents of your mailbox will still be possible when a master password was set - it is only valid/required when retrieving accesss to stored account passwords.

Now the problem is if I change password of my mail (gmail) from one location it get changed simultaneously in all the computers.

Can you describe what you do in more detail? Thunderbird does not sync profiles (including account passwords) across multiple devices.

christ1 said

Can you describe what you do in more detail? Thunderbird does not sync profiles (including account passwords) across multiple devices.

I assume that by that, the user referred to a way to deliberately make the email inaccessible on one or more locations (i.e. it’s not the issue, but a way to achieve the goal by changing account passwords for some locations, which wouldn’t work.)

drpmadhu said

I use mozilla thunderbird to receive & send mail at my office& home. I have mozilla installed in 4 computers. Now the problem is if I change password of my mail (gmail) from one location it get changed simultaneously in all the computers. So any one can access my mail from any of these computers. How can I access the mail only in the computers I desire and not through all the computers?

You have to explain a bit. You can only change gmail's password on the gmail-server thru webmail. That would make the saved pwd in all your Tbird-installations void. You'll have to reenter the new pwd on each device. There is no syncing, so you entering in one place should never make that account accessible in another without the new pwd.

This is what happened. I Changed password of my gmail through thunderbird from my office. Somehow my home computer opens my mail even without asking me the new password. At home also I use thunderbird. Is it a new feature in the new version of thunderbird?

My home computer and office computer are in different location- using different internet service.

Thank you!

You can't change password at your gmail-account thru Tbird or any other client. You must log in to gmail thru a browser and webmail and change it there.