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

Cannot receive new chats

more options

I just started using Thunderbird, and I'm really liking it. However, it seems to have a problem with the IM feature. I'm signed in with Facebook and Google Talk. All of my contacts appear correctly, and I can start a conversation with all of them.

On Facebook, I can send messages, but Thunderbird does not receive new chats; I have to go to Facebook to see what the other person sent.

On Google Talk, I can send messages, but it says "Error sending message" even though when I go to Google+, the chat sent just fine. I also cannot receive chats using this account.

I'd like to be able to use the chat function in Thunderbird, but if I can't receive chats from other people, it's useless. Am I doing something wrong maybe? Is there a way to fix this?

I just started using Thunderbird, and I'm really liking it. However, it seems to have a problem with the IM feature. I'm signed in with Facebook and Google Talk. All of my contacts appear correctly, and I can start a conversation with all of them. On Facebook, I can send messages, but Thunderbird does not receive new chats; I have to go to Facebook to see what the other person sent. On Google Talk, I can send messages, but it says "Error sending message" even though when I go to Google+, the chat sent just fine. I also cannot receive chats using this account. I'd like to be able to use the chat function in Thunderbird, but if I can't receive chats from other people, it's useless. Am I doing something wrong maybe? Is there a way to fix this?

Valgt løsning

It will be Norton360 is my guess. Have a poke around in the firewall settings Make sure Thunderbird has full access to the internet and make sure external connections are allowed from chat.facebook.com as server and 5222 as port

You might check the Google talk stuff while your on the job talk.google.com on port 5222, or on port 443.

Are you using 2 factor authentication? Might be Thunderbird is only authorized for mail per Google :)

Les dette svaret i sammenhengen 👍 0

All Replies (6)

more options

I don't really know why it is not working for you, it works for me, or at least facebook does. have never used the Google talk.

But I am guessing it will be your firewall getting excited about incoming connections to Thunderbird.

Try starting your computer in windows safe mode with networking per the Microsoft instructions and see if that helps at all. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/start-computer-safe-mode#start-computer-safe-mode=windows-7

more options

Booting the computer in safe mode, I was able to successfully send and receive Facebook chats. However, Google Talk is still broken, and does not work.

Now that I know I can receive Facebook chats in safe mode, how would I go about finding what's blocking Thunderbird? I'm using Windows 7 64-bit with Norton 360.

Here's what happens when I use Google Talk. I'm not too concerned about that at the moment though:

more options

Valgt løsning

It will be Norton360 is my guess. Have a poke around in the firewall settings Make sure Thunderbird has full access to the internet and make sure external connections are allowed from chat.facebook.com as server and 5222 as port

You might check the Google talk stuff while your on the job talk.google.com on port 5222, or on port 443.

Are you using 2 factor authentication? Might be Thunderbird is only authorized for mail per Google :)

more options

I solved the problem. I looked in Norton's firewall settings as you suggested, and changed it from "Auto" to "Allow". Now Thunderbird works perfectly with Facebook chats! Thank you so much Matt! This will definitely get me a better experience!

Google Talk is still not working, but that might be more of a problem with working with Google APIs. I don't use it that much, so it's not a big deal.

more options

The last time I used Google talk is was to my niece in January, and that was using her sending me a message from her mobile phone via Google talk.

When looking on Google for thing to do with Thunderbird chat, it is a good idea to search libpurple. Even information Re Pidgin is useful as lib purple is the guts of Thunderbird chat and pidgin

This add-on fills out the missing libpurple protocols for Thunderbird https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/additional-chat-protocols/?src=search

more options

The add-on you linked isn't compatible with Thunderbird 24, and the description doesn't say anything about Google Talk. It's not that much of a problem though, considering I almost never use it.