We're calling on all EU-based Mozillians with iOS or iPadOS devices to help us monitor Apple’s new browser choice screens. Join the effort to hold Big Tech to account!

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

This thread was closed and archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Thunderbird fundamental failure to function as an e-mail client for a decade.

  • 7 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Wayne Mery

more options

Thundebird is an e-mail client i.e. send and receive mail over the internet.

Over that last decade or so Thunderbird has been making endless upgrades adding pointless additions like Web browsing.

A few days ago I deleted an email account after which, when I re-opened Thunderbird to send an e-mail (i.e. from an E_MAIL client), it searched for the deleted account couldn't find it (gee I wonder why) and then for an "unknown" reason couldn't send an e-mail.

In fact, merely deleting an account has rendered Thunderbird a useless piece of garbage. (Oh sorry, I can still search the internet although I still don't know why I'd use Thunderbird for that?)

So, I looked for help (using a web browser not an email client) on the internet and the only (useless) help was from 2014. (So it's an ongoing fault for a decade.)

My question is this: Why would Thunderbird spend the last decade programming pointless upgrades when you haven't even got to the level of being able to add and delete accounts, send and receive e-mails with YOUR EMAIL CLIENT?

My recommendation is:

Keep the current version of Thundebird as "Thunderbird Plus" (a multifunctional e-mail client that looks impressive and does everything other than sending and receiving e-mails)

AND

Create a new Version called "Thunderbird" that can be used as an e-mail client (that can actually add and delete e-mail accounts, send and receive e-mails that is designed for people who want an e-mail client and not a hobby tool to while away the hours on pointless activities superfluous to an e-mail client.

OR

Before adding another pointless upgrade to the current version, fix it so it functions as an e-mail client (unless you'd prefer to retain a major flaw for another decade.)

If this upsets your "free" sensibilities, consider: There's no point in creating something, even for free, if it simply cannot meet its primary function. Thunderbird version one is better than what is provided today (that's why I started using it). Well done the original designers.

Thundebird is an e-mail client i.e. send and receive mail over the internet. Over that last decade or so Thunderbird has been making endless upgrades adding pointless additions like Web browsing. A few days ago I deleted an email account after which, when I re-opened Thunderbird to send an e-mail (i.e. from an E_MAIL client), it searched for the deleted account couldn't find it (gee I wonder why) and then for an "unknown" reason couldn't send an e-mail. In fact, merely deleting an account has rendered Thunderbird a useless piece of garbage. (Oh sorry, I can still search the internet although I still don't know why I'd use Thunderbird for that?) So, I looked for help (using a web browser not an email client) on the internet and the only (useless) help was from 2014. (So it's an ongoing fault for a decade.) My question is this: Why would Thunderbird spend the last decade programming pointless upgrades when you haven't even got to the level of being able to add and delete accounts, send and receive e-mails with YOUR EMAIL CLIENT? My recommendation is: Keep the current version of Thundebird as "Thunderbird Plus" (a multifunctional e-mail client that looks impressive and does everything other than sending and receiving e-mails) AND Create a new Version called "Thunderbird" that can be used as an e-mail client (that can actually add and delete e-mail accounts, send and receive e-mails that is designed for people who want an e-mail client and not a hobby tool to while away the hours on pointless activities superfluous to an e-mail client. OR Before adding another pointless upgrade to the current version, fix it so it functions as an e-mail client (unless you'd prefer to retain a major flaw for another decade.) If this upsets your "free" sensibilities, consider: There's no point in creating something, even for free, if it simply cannot meet its primary function. Thunderbird version one is better than what is provided today (that's why I started using it). Well done the original designers.

All Replies (7)

more options

Thunderbird is sending and receiving emails just fine on my end (using the latest version by the way), which is the case for millions of other users. So, let us know if you need help with getting your copy of Thunderbird back to functioning like it should, or if you would rather wait another decade for a fix to a bug that doesn't exist.

If you're not interested in a fix and are just here to vent your decade-old frustrations with the product, ignore that I offered to help and I will gladly do the same.

Note: you can always download and run the "good old version" of your choice from https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/ and keep off of newer versions.

more options

And there is your problem Stans and why Thunderbird has had the same bug for a decade: You're so arrogant as to how perfect the program is you ignore bug reports and it never gets fixed.

Let's have a quick look at your comment: "So, let us know if you need help with getting your copy of Thunderbird back to functioning like it should,"

Oh?! Wait a minute, how are you going to "get my copy to back to functioning like it should" if you are declaring it's perfect and has no bugs?

Are you offering to fix a "non bug", "a bug", you claim, that doesn't exist?

So Stans, tell me, how do you believe you can fix a bug for me you just declared doesn't exist?

Yes, I'd be interested in a fix for the non bug so that my perfectly running copy of Thunderbird can send and receive e-mails. And while you're at it, maybe you can explain a new method for deleting email accounts (not using the Thunderbird declared method) that won't cause this non bug to happen again the next time I delete an account.

I have a great car, over the decades they've added hundred of features, computers, high speed wide tyres, ceramic brakes, 8 speed gearbox, launch control and the list goes on and on. But, if it can never start again after an oil change its not a car. And if 10 million people who haven't changed the oil say it is, they are wrong.

Stans, for future reference (use it as a life lesson): If you are attempting to make a cutting statement directed at another person don't start by commenting something works perfectly and you know how to fix it in the same sentence it makes you sound well..........

And, Stans, for the record: If you can follow the programmers method for taking an action and that action causes their program to fail, it's what people in the computer industry call "a bug". Most interested programmers would like to eliminate it in less that a decade and if that comment upsets you then you should perhaps find a better use for your time.

Modified by firefox2220

more options
you haven't even got to the level of being able to add and delete accounts, send and receive e-mails with YOUR EMAIL CLIENT?

I can send, receive, add and delete accounts just fine. There are outlier cases where remnants of deleted accounts exist in Thunderbird's preferences file, but cleaning after them is as simple as searching through one plain-text file that you can open using Notepad or a text editor of your choice. If there is a dormant decade-old bug report that covers this specific case, I imagine there is no incentive to resolve it when not a whole lot of users are experiencing it and an easy workaround exists to remedy it. Call it arrogance or what you may, it is what it is, and you can apply this known remedy or wait another decade for a bug fix that won't come. Your call.

You're so arrogant as to how perfect the program is you ignore bug reports and it never gets fixed.

If it were perfect, bugzilla and this forum wouldn't exist, and we wouldn't be here offering help to those who need it, neither would Thunderbird be getting regular updates with fixes to security holes and bugs, but go on and shove words into my mouth.

more options

Oh yes, I was too dumb to try and edit the .js file before commenting.

The e-mail address your perfect Thunderbird was trying to look up isn't in the .js file and therefore can't be edited out.

So, Thunderbird goes to the .js file for information? Apparently not only the .js file, it stores information elsewhere.

So is that a bug?

But thanks for thinking I wouldn't make any effort to fix my own problem even though I already demonstrated I had.

And, your link? I'm curious as to how anybody with my problem could get to that link even if it worked? It's title is totally irrelevant to my problem, I don't have a POP or IMAP problem I have a specific Thunderbird configuration problem.

I guess the bug is so irrelevant to Thunderbird it doesn't even warrant help or support?

(Please, again, if you are trying to comment on how good Thunderbird is: Don't say "we ignore bugs" in the same sentence as you say "we have a great system for dealing with bugs called bugzilla". )

That brings me to your comment "If it has been reported as a bug". So finding that out isn't important by your assessment? You can give a detailed account as to why the "bug' was ignored but you can't state whether it has or hasn't been reported as a "bug"? That incongruity isn't working for me.

And on this great "bugzilla": I went to "bugzilla" I signed on using my GitHub account (which, absurdly, required an e-mail verification) and on completion of my sign in it came up with some stupid comment I couldn't access "bugzilla". So, that is why I'm here and not bugzilla, yet another total failure of the system.

Apparently bugzilla is it's own bug.

Mozilla asks for contribution and support but makes accessing the system so convoluted it isn't worth trying.

Just go an look at the useless support/contact pages yourself.

Can I highlight one more thing: Bug reporting is used to eliminate faults that are irregular and not found under normal usage (unless Mozilla is just hopelessly incompetent), for those organisations who are enthusiastic enough to seek perfection and for those organisations who realise failure to fix an irregular minor fault may, at some future time, lead to a major fault. (That's why pharmaceutical companies don't simply ignore 1:1,000,000 deaths.)

Based on your comments, the bottom line is this:

Mozilla chooses to ignore bugs so it's not worth reporting them even if the bugzilla system worked and you could. If a bug is reported you can provide a reason why it was ignored whether you actually know if it's been reported or not. Mozilla doesn't check if bugs have been reported previously it just decides which ones to ignore. Your simple solution, isn't a solution, so perhaps, if I was thus desirous of a real solution I could probably wait between 10 years and infinity for Mozilla to fix it. The bug will continue to be ignored because Mozilla is perfect. People shouldn't get annoyed at these obvious failures because Mozilla is perfect.

So given that there is a major bug, Mozilla is destined to ignore it, can offer no help or support on the issue because it's not interested in even finding out if its been reported let alone fix it and it will therefore never find a solution that more or less gives me my answer which is: Don't use Thundrbird.

There is a certain constancy with Mozilla given Firefox has also been going through downgrades since it changed to the new version a few years ago and stopped being truly open source preferring rather to dictate it's own view of what people should want and disabling or crippling more apps at each itteration.

Perhaps it's time to move from thinking Mozilla "is a great open source alternative" and accept Mozilla is, like all these organisations end up defaulting to: Just another dud.

Oh, and if you find an actual solution in the next decade or so, maybe you should add it to support under a searchable heading (rather than, as you seem to be declaring, the apparently pointless pursuit of contacting bugzilla).

Modified by firefox2220

more options
  • Do you actually have a mail account configured in Thunderbird with which to send mail?
  • Did you just delete the last mail account when you deleted the account you mentioned in your original posting?

Please post the more troubleshooting information from the help menu that we can see what we are working with.

more options

Matt,

I have 25 current e-mail addresses.

When I get a new product (purchased item or software) requiring sign up I give it its own e-mail address so I can delete it if I get spammed. I create the accounts in my domain and get rid of them if they are not used. This one started getting spammed.

I can do a full recovery as my firefox and thunderbird profiles are automatically backed up every day and every week and month and long term.

My aggravation was:

I wasted my time trying to do a bug report to bugzilla which accepted my account, put me through a verification process, then wouldn't allow me to use it.

There was no help on Mozilla and the help I found didn't work and was over 8 years old (meaning a long term bug).

And you only need to go to Mozilla to see, although they ask for contributions the convoluted number of options makes it almost impossible to contact them and certainly impossible for something specific like this.

Finally I have known how to completely eliminate email spam for over a decade and history has proved no amount of effort can find anyone, able to effect change, is interested in doing it.

I simply deleted 2 accounts being spammed.

As said, the next day I tried to send an e-mail and before it would send it searched to log onto the deleted account. On being unable to do that (the e-mail address was deleted from my domain), it said it could not send my e-mail for reasons unknown:

"Sending of the message failed. Failed due to unexpected error 80004005. No description is available. The message could not be sent using Outgoing server (SMTP) mail.ktmjbell.org for an unknown reason. Please verify that your Outgoing server (SMTP) settings are correct and try again."

I text searched both the installation files and the profile files (in App Data) for any record of the deleted e-mail account and there was none. So the option suggested by Stans was already eliminated before I posted. (I don't post until I have eliminated all the fundamental, non programming options).

I looked at the configuration in Thunderbird, specifically SMTP settings and although Thunderbird had deleted the account, there it was, my e-mail address was still listed under SMTP settings. I removed it.

That stopped Thunderbird searching for the deleted e-mail address sign on but the error remained:

"Sending of the message failed. Failed due to unexpected error 80004005. No description is available. The message could not be sent using Outgoing server (SMTP) mail.ktmjbell.org for an unknown reason. Please verify that your Outgoing server (SMTP) settings are correct and try again."

I could reinstall my old profile, I could reinstall Thunderbird and only configure the e-mail accounts that remain but that wouldn't help Mozilla.

Representing Mozilla as perfect, as ignoring bugs, as accepting a bug remains for a decade un-reolved, as admitting a bug report may or may not have been submitted previously and the observation of 10 years of development (which has added absolutely zero to my use except making increasingly more irrelevant additions to get in the way and to ignore i.e. as an e-mail client user to me no improvement whatsoever over the last decade + only functionality downgrades) which has ignored actual functionality of the programme as an e-mail client is not the best way to elicit input.

I'm quite happy to just dump Thunderbird and use my cPanel at my domain (or another e-mail client) but I chose the increasingly frustrating attempt to contact Mozilla with a bug report for their benefit, not mine. If there is a solution Mozilla should ensure it finds it's way to help and support properly indexed as a failure following deletion of an e-mail account but if the Mozilla view is adding rubbish like web search to an e-mail client is more urgent and preferable to getting it to add and delete e-mail accounts/send and receive e-mails, like Mozilla, I just don't care, I'll find someone who does.

more options

You make several references to decades old bugs with not a single link to a bug report. And a reference to "I wasted my time trying to do a bug report to bugzilla which accepted my account, put me through a verification process, then wouldn't allow me to use it." which has nothing to do with Thunderbird, and I'm pretty sure has a contact address for resolving problems. And lastly, many detours unrelated to problem solving.

In short, this topic is going nowhere fast. Therefore I am locking it.

I am sure you have a problem. If you want help resolving your problem, please be respectful of people's time and post details about your problem and only that problem, as breifly has possible, and also please provide information requested of you.

To quote the submission form you used to request assistance, "Be nice. Our volunteers are Mozilla users just like you, who take the time out of their day to help."