re :small "star" has appears within the parenthesis quotes with the number of new or unread emails

This tells you that the collapsed folder contains subfolders and there are new or unread emails which could be in the top level folder or in the subfolders.

ElizabethSChutt said

I believe that the email program Thunderbird updated within the past week. I have noticed a couple of small, but puzzling changes. One being that a small "star" has appears within the parenthesis quotes with the number of new or unread emails I have received. Another seems to be an increase in the time that Thunderbird is taking to delete an email message and an increase in the number of times that Thunderbird "stops responding." This literally never used to happen. However over the past couple of days I have noticed that Thunderbird has stopped responding as I wade through my emails at least once per session. The program does recover, but I'm puzzled. It is something I am doing? I am running Windows 8. on an HP desktop.

Thank you for the answer to a puzzling thing - I just noticed this over the past week. Now if I can just wade through the rest of my emails without Thunderbird deciding to "not respond' I'll be fine. I truly appreciate the help. I'm still quite new to Thunderbird and Firefox, although I prefer them to the "other guys" and am still learning my way aroung.