Restart Thunderbird with add-ons disabled (Thunderbird Safe Mode). On the Help menu, click on "Restart with Add-ons Disabled". If Thunderbird works like normal, there is an Add-on or Theme interfering with normal operations. You will need to re-enable add-ons one at a time until you locate the offender.

Awesome idea and thank you for the input. Unfortunately it still does the same thing. Sent messages to myself (different accounts) and the will not download until I press the get message for the individual account.

More Information:

I did notice if i leave Thunderbird alone and let the "Check for Messages" Timer (30 minutes) trigger. That will get messages for all my accounts set to "30 minutes".

Temporarily I am setting them all to 5 minutes. I can do other things after opening Thunderbird in the morning (get coffee) LoL

Thank you again for the input it was very well worth the try!

what mail provider? Is Thunderbird starting up along with your computer?

Most importantly, what sort of tab do you have open. Calendar turns off get mail etc for instance.

Again, thank you for your concern and help :)

My Mail Provider is Suddenlink standard paid service that is part of my ISP. I chose to use the Pop Servers. I can switch to Imap if needed.

Thunderbird does not open with WIndows.

No extra tabs are open. I didn't care for the Lightning Calendar when it was added last year. I have uninstalled it.

Add-Ons, Extensions, and Themes are all empty. I like plain and simple.

The Plugins have the Flash Shockwave (disabled) and the standard English Dictionary.

The only thing I can relate is an update to Thunderbird a couple of days before I noticed I had to manually download. Some "Views" are included here in a snapshot. I don't know if they will be helpful but.... ?

all I can see to do is the next level of diagnostic.

Restart the operating system in safe mode with Networking. This loads only the very basics needed to start your computer while enabling an Internet connection. Click on your operating system for instructions on how to start in safe mode: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, OSX

If safe mode for the operating system fixes the issue, there's other software in your computer that's causing problems. Possibilities include but not limited to: AV scanning, virus/malware, background downloads such as program updates.

Okay, thanks again for the suggestion. I have done this and hopefully have more information that may be helpful.

I booted in Safe Mode w/ Networking and ran Thunderbird. The issue still exists. Nothing changed :(

I then restarted Windows 7 Pro 64bit did the following.

I made a complete backup with MozBackup. I then renamed my profile .ini file and the folder to a new extension name.

I made a fresh install of Thunderbird (same downloaded 52.2.1) file from the other day and it made a clean install, asking the normal questions in the beginning about email account, etc. I told it "later", etc.

In setting up my "new" email account (actually an old account for testing) I let Thunderbird intelligence explore the email server and decide what the settings should be. It picked imap / insecure (currently all 8 accounts are on pop / insecure). I just accepted the defaults Thunderbird wanted input my password, etc.

I shutdown and restarted Thunderbird for good practices and the newly setup, test account works fine :)

I thought it may be some "junk" in my profile so I decided to selective / minimal restore to Thunderbird with MozBackup. I restored only the Email and the Addressbook for the 8 accounts. The issue was imported back into Thunderbird :( back to square one... The issue seems to reside in the Email & Folders or the Addressbook. Weird, huh?

For general purposes, I restored again and restored all of the MozBackup. I cleaned all the .msf files and reapired all 26 folders / subfolders. Still the same issue but everything back to the way it was when I started this morning with exception all files, folders, etc are being stored in a new 'area' on the hard drive. Old copies are still intact :)

Basically I am back to square one but I proven Thunderbird can work correctly in my normal Windows environment.

I am thinking about using some other email program (Outlook) and import all data into it. Test sending and receiving, etc. then Import back toa clean install of Thunderbird from Outlook.

Is there a better way to "Wash" my data files? I am so confused.... Ideas, please?

BUMP Up

In attempts to go forward with troubleshooting, I have done the following.

I installed Outlook and used recommended utilites to import all information needed into Outlook. All is working as intended with Outlook. Messages download as they are support to without having to click on individual accounts. The Send / Receive All works fine.

I have completely uninstalled Mozilla Thunderbird. I have removed all traces of Thunderbird from my computer. Fully uninstalled and hand deleted traces including registry entries, %appdata, etc.

Fresh install of Thunderbird went as normal, the Thunderbird asks to be default, imported data, etc.

Thunderbird still does the same thing *and* it refused to import 5 sub folders. Apparently, Thunderbird cannot handle accounts with large data accumulation and the use of many accounts.

I have 11 email accounts and a little over 60 folders (including sub folders). The profile data folder (Mail) is a little over 3Gb is size.

I am recommending to others (several thousand of my customers) not to use Thunderbird and I am staying with Outlook until something changes.

Ideas?

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what email provider? was your test account on the same server as the problem accounts?

Hello Matt, thanks for stopping by.

Yes, the test account I used is the main account at the same provider.

I have the same problem on my desktop PC. Gateway, Intel I-7 chip, ISP is Spectrum (formerly Time Warner), download speed of 100 Mbps, dual-booting with Win10 and Linux Mint 18.2

I did the restart into safe mode and disabled all add-ons. After restarting, I tried the "get messages" and nothing happens. Nothing on the status line where it used to say "no new messages to download". All the server settings are the same as before, etc.

I reset the time interval to check for messages to 1 minute. Not working. Like the OP, I'm still getting messages but can't manually request them. I got out of TBird and started it up again. When I did, incoming emails showed up.  ???

I also have the same problem on my laptop running Linux Mint 18.2 But in this instance, there's a weird message as shown in the attached image.