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

Can't see contents of email on Thunderbird since newest update

more options

Hello, we are running Thunderbird 128.1.0osr (32-bit) released on 8/6/24. Ever since the upgrade my husband's email has not worked correctly.

Around that same time, he received a pop up within the Thunderbird app asking for donations from Thunderbird. The popup would not go away and my husband lost a ton of his email.

Ever since these two events his Thunderbird email won't work correctly.

Messages since 8/4/24 at 6:32 am DO work correctly. Emails prior to 5/6/23 also work correctly. Any message in the time period from 5/6/23 at 11:26 am to 8/4/24 does NOT work correctly.

We are having the same trouble with the sent items folder.

We use a third party email that we import into Thunderbird and have used the third party email and Thunderbird since at least 2020 and never had this problem.

We can see all the message headers in our email list, but when we click on the email, nothing shows up. It will briefly say "message loading" at the bottom corner, but the email is totally blank. Furthermore, the message that peeks out at the bottom is the last email that we clicked on from the section of emails that does work. It is not changing to the email we are actually clicking on.

For example: lets say we have an email with message header "thank you for your order" received on 8/15. We click into that and it pulls up fine.

Then we go into older email from 7/31. The message header is "hurry sale ends today". If we click on that, it will say "message loading" at the bottom corner. However, the message preview at the bottom of the screen still displays the from/to/subject from the previous email we viewed from 8/15 "thank you for your order" (the message from 8/15 shows as blank though).

Even if we double click the message from 7/31 that we are trying to view, it just pulls up a blank screen. The bar at the top will briefly display the correct message title that we are trying to open, then it just blanks out.

Steps we have taken:

1. In Account Settings/Privacy I clicked to "allow remote content". This made an improvement as prior to this we were having the same problem even with recent messages. We could see one or two messages that had just arrived, then the third message we couldn't see. We have messages set to delete on the server after so many days. So I think it was able to recover the message that were still on the remove 3rd party server.

2. We moved a lot of the emails into archive folders as I thought the inbox may be too large. That didn't make any improvement.

Thanks for any help you can provide. My husband has a lot of really important information in his emails that he needs.

Hello, we are running Thunderbird 128.1.0osr (32-bit) released on 8/6/24. Ever since the upgrade my husband's email has not worked correctly. Around that same time, he received a pop up within the Thunderbird app asking for donations from Thunderbird. The popup would not go away and my husband lost a ton of his email. Ever since these two events his Thunderbird email won't work correctly. Messages since 8/4/24 at 6:32 am DO work correctly. Emails prior to 5/6/23 also work correctly. Any message in the time period from 5/6/23 at 11:26 am to 8/4/24 does NOT work correctly. We are having the same trouble with the sent items folder. We use a third party email that we import into Thunderbird and have used the third party email and Thunderbird since at least 2020 and never had this problem. We can see all the message headers in our email list, but when we click on the email, nothing shows up. It will briefly say "message loading" at the bottom corner, but the email is totally blank. Furthermore, the message that peeks out at the bottom is the last email that we clicked on from the section of emails that does work. It is not changing to the email we are actually clicking on. For example: lets say we have an email with message header "thank you for your order" received on 8/15. We click into that and it pulls up fine. Then we go into older email from 7/31. The message header is "hurry sale ends today". If we click on that, it will say "message loading" at the bottom corner. However, the message preview at the bottom of the screen still displays the from/to/subject from the previous email we viewed from 8/15 "thank you for your order" (the message from 8/15 shows as blank though). Even if we double click the message from 7/31 that we are trying to view, it just pulls up a blank screen. The bar at the top will briefly display the correct message title that we are trying to open, then it just blanks out. Steps we have taken: 1. In Account Settings/Privacy I clicked to "allow remote content". This made an improvement as prior to this we were having the same problem even with recent messages. We could see one or two messages that had just arrived, then the third message we couldn't see. We have messages set to delete on the server after so many days. So I think it was able to recover the message that were still on the remove 3rd party server. 2. We moved a lot of the emails into archive folders as I thought the inbox may be too large. That didn't make any improvement. Thanks for any help you can provide. My husband has a lot of really important information in his emails that he needs.

All Replies (4)

more options

What is your anti-virus software?

Helpful?

more options

Hi, I checked his computer and he has the regular Windows Security running. I also found Microsoft Defender, McAfee Personal Security and McAfee LifeSafe

Helpful?

more options

First of all, I'd get rid of all things McAfee.

Anti-virus software is known to cause Thunderbird mail file corruption. Inbox is particularly susceptible to corruption. Therefore create an exemption in Windows Defender for the Thunderbird profile folder, so that the Defender real-time scanner will not scan it. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_how-to-find-your-profile

Finally, you may need to repair corrupted folders. Right-click the folder - Properties - Repair Folder

Note, in the worst case corruption is already beyond repair, and messages may already be gone, even though you still do see the headers in the thread pane. Repairing folders will attempt to clear the corruption and those orphan messages will be removed from view. In that case you can only restore lost messages from a backup created prior to the corruption.

Helpful?

more options

lexi, has cleaning up the antivirus helped?

Helpful?

Ask a question

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.