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

Upgrade to Thunderbird 78.0 resulted in a blank email screen (fixed)

more options

Upgrading to Thunderbird version 78.0 from version 68.10 (using PatchMyPC) resulted on my three PCs in a blank email screen. All emails are still listed but when I tried to read any email, then the email was blank. The to, from and subject textboxes are not there and the email text is also not visible.

The solution is to restart Thunderbird in save mode. For this goto 'Help' and then select 'Restart with add-ons disabled'. Click on restart when it asks you if you are sure. Then another popup window appears and you have to tick the two options here. These are 'disable all add ons' and 'Reset toolbars and controls' and then click on 'make changes and restart'. After this the issue is solved. I had as far as I know no add-ons nor toolbars added to Thunderbird but in case you had, you might want to try to add these back one by one.

Upgrading to Thunderbird version 78.0 from version 68.10 (using PatchMyPC) resulted on my three PCs in a blank email screen. All emails are still listed but when I tried to read any email, then the email was blank. The to, from and subject textboxes are not there and the email text is also not visible. The solution is to restart Thunderbird in save mode. For this goto 'Help' and then select 'Restart with add-ons disabled'. Click on restart when it asks you if you are sure. Then another popup window appears and you have to tick the two options here. These are 'disable all add ons' and 'Reset toolbars and controls' and then click on 'make changes and restart'. After this the issue is solved. I had as far as I know no add-ons nor toolbars added to Thunderbird but in case you had, you might want to try to add these back one by one.

Chosen solution

I had the same problem on 78.0.1 x64 on Windows 10 2004. "Disable all add-ons" made no difference (I have no add-ons). "Reset toolbars and controls" resolved the problem.

I'm happy again.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (4)

more options

I had the same issue, another person had posted the same solution. PS - Thanks for using PatchMyPC.

more options

I had the same problem. The solution offered in this post solved the issue.

Modified by hlsu

more options

Chosen Solution

I had the same problem on 78.0.1 x64 on Windows 10 2004. "Disable all add-ons" made no difference (I have no add-ons). "Reset toolbars and controls" resolved the problem.

I'm happy again.

Modified by SarkyGit

more options

I have this problem this morning - several blank emails. However, my Thunderbird version shows as 68 and says it is "up to date." I have Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga x1 Windows 10 2004 I tried restarting Thunderbird w/ just reset toolbars and controls, no good. Tried restarting with both checkboxes disabling add-ons, no difference. Please help? Here is some of the troubleshooting info.:

 Application Basics
   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 68.11.0
   Build ID: 20200721201500
   Update Channel: release
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.11.0
   OS: Windows_NT 10.0
   Launcher Process: Enabled
   Multiprocess Windows: 0/0
             Disabled
   Remote Processes: 0
   Enterprise Policies: Inactive
   Google Location Service Key: Missing
   Google Safebrowsing Key: Missing
   Mozilla Location Service Key: Missing
   Safe Mode: false
 Mail and News Accounts
   account1:
     INCOMING: account1, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext
   account2:
     INCOMING: account2, , (pop3) mail.comcast.net:995, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , smtp.comcast.net:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true