This is very very unlikely to be a Thunderbird issue. However try moving all mail in the sent folder on the web site to another folder. DO not send any mail for say 24 hours because Microsoft web sites are notoriously slow in performing server side actions and then send a mail and see if it downloads on IMAP.

I am only guessing, but I think the folder, or a mail may be corrupt. emptying it and waiting hopefully will see some sort of reset at the M$ end.

Hello Matt,

Thanks for the fast reply to my issue.

I will do as you suggest but one more question. You say not to send mail for 24 hours, but what about incoming mail as I get lots every day and I can't stop them or does it not matter for them?

Thanks again for the help and info. Fred

As it is your sent folder that is causing issues and incoming mail does not go there, it should not be an issue. But my 24 hours is really just a arbitrary guess. it might just as well be 2 minutes.

You could try it almost straight away and see if that works, and if not wait..

Hey,

Well I tried what you said and the new folder where i moved old sent messages to has same issue.

I get many popup thunderbird messages but they disappear quick.

These are the messages i get from Thunderbird.

1) email@email.com Old Sent Downloading message header 15 of 1450

2) connection to server email@email.com timed out.

3) The current operation on 'Old Sent' did not succeed. The mail server account for email@email.com responded: select command is not permitted in current state (NotAuthenticatedServerError).

There are a couple more but I can't print screen fast enough to capture them.

Not sure what is going on but its a pain in the butt. The email@email.com i wrote is not real I just used that as example. My password is correct I it works with pop3 and I tried several times to be sure. Old Sent is the new folder on Server where I put the old sent messages as your suggestion.

So any more ideas what i should do besides staying with pop3 for the time being?

Thanks in advance Fred

Hey one more post here is the error window from thunderbird.

Hope this helps. Thanks in advance Fred

Edit: Sorry Did all errors listed, hope this helps more.

ok, this might be a good time to disable any email scanning you have in your anti virus package. They really do not cope this more than a half dozen mails downloading and it is quite probably the cause of your timeout error.

Having said that this is sort of what I expected. I think now that one ,at least, of the mail in that folder are corrupt to the point the server is not able to download them. Just at a guess is will be around 15 or 16 from the earliest mail as that is when the timeouts occur., So have a look online at the mails around that point in the list. Is the sent folder working correctly now?

Hey Matt,

First, Thanks for all the help, I am sure you don't get paid for this and I really appreciate it.

Now, I have disabled anti virus totally have a pause feature built into it. you also mention corrupt email, problem is i cant tell as the messages don't come in any order. So as example the several TB did download before error were some from 2008, 2014 and 2015. So I cant tell which email is bad to delete it.

with the Av disabled/paused i still got error but it went off screen to fast look like some error 53 but not sure .

Currently inbox is downloading and I will do old Sent folder next, guess ill see in a minute or two. I will let you know later what heppens as inbox should take awhile as I have more messages than I can count in it..

Thanks again. Fred

Hey Matt,

Well I have been doing everything suggested and sent box is still DOA.

I decided to stay with POP3 since it works but I did prefer imap as my mails would go where I wanted them. But I have set up rules so mail is now going where I need it.

Anyways i will try imap again in a few weeks and maybe by then it will work again. Hope so as microsoft blames TB and says its not them so they refuse to help.

Thanks again, i'll post followup in a few weeks. Fred

Try using windows live mail with the account and see if it works or not. It might help understand first if it is Thunderbird or outlook.com. I think it is them. but this will prove me either right or wrong. If right you have a Microsoft product to go back to them with instead of Thunderbird. If wrong I need to lok more closely at what is going on.

Hey Matt,

Well I have done what you said and Microsoft Windows Essentials (Live Mail) installed and works fine. I can open every folder and the messages download and open fine, thou I did not open every message.

Again thanks for all the help. Fred

I am posting this, not as a fix, but to link three support topics which have certain commonalities. Perhaps the three affected individuals might share some information and perhaps a common software, isp or hardware might emerge.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1086246 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1086243 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1085628

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the links, some of them sound and look like the same issue. Problem with that is we have different isp and locations around the world as well as different email providers.

It also seems that all our issues started recently which makes me think maybe it was a TB update that caused it. Or maybe closing TB while while messages were still downloading. But then after deleting the effected account and deleting the files in folder then re-adding it, i thought it can be that then.

Anyways thanks again for the help.

Have a great day Fred

Well you could always try some older version d see if any better. You could also try pre-release.

Both of those will mess with add-ons.

V 31 here http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/31.6.0/win32/en-US/

V24 here http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/24.8.0/win32/en-US/

V17 here http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/17.0.11esr/win32/en-US/

Current daily build https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-central/thunderbird-44.0a1.en-US.win32.installer.exe but I would recommend an advanced install that places it in a folder called daily.