I did try a check disk run last night which took 12 hours. It said nothing, did nothing. I'll search further afield for the answer. Thanks

I'm nagging now. This is an example of how my emails are being received: The ‘World’s Most Remote Dealership’ - (The "World's Most Remote Dealership"). And ‘Throw Your Arms Around Me - (Throw Your Arms Around Me). Punctuation is being played with. Any helpers, please

View menu (alt+V) > Character encoding > unicode And see if that corrects individual messages.

Fabulous, Matt. Thank you so much.

Hi Matt. I promise I'm not ghosting you. But you seem to know things. Until switching to Unicode 8 just now I had not had this problem for several months (see image). At that time I was in the middle of a major promotion and I quite simply couldn't use Thunderbird. I tried to sort the problem but it drove me crazy and I removed Thunderbird totally from my PC and started using my G-Mail account. Good back-up (only) up but not as good as T-bird. By the time I'd done what everyone told me, I had reconfigured my database (still not right) and a number of other things went wrong and, well, frustrating. Where does it all come from and would you have a clue as to how to fix it?

If you can put up with me, I will just keep answering till I go dry.

That error message is the winning team at bigpond have got themselves listed again for having their servers used to further exploits. They get listed regularly and probably have some form of automation to have them selves removed, as they are not currently listed. http://www.spamhaus.org/query/ip/10.148.185.129

Personally I just don't use Bigpond mail. They have no idea. Their support is about as poor as it is possible to be and certainly supplied by the firm that sent in the lowest quote. And when it comes to email the conversation is always about your copy of Outlook. Even after they are advised it is not installed.

I use GMail through Thunderbird. as well as Yahoo and outlook.com (support must at least have heard of them) I have basically stopped having email issues since I stopped using Bigpond for my regular outgoing mail. (I still monitor the accounts as they are subscribed to mailing lists).

In relation to your original issue, you might find specifying a character set in Tools menu (Alt+T) > options > display > formatting > advanced may help, but unfortunately character sets in email are a mess. Mostly through the plain lazy ignorance of developers writing web applications and sending mail from them.

If you don't go dry on me then I hear you! And appreciate you. I agree whole-heartedly. I have great trouble controlling my temper when dealing with anyone from Telstra-Big Pond. I think I'm going to go the same way as you. I must say, though, I find T-Bird a better system than G-Mail, in look and ease of use. But the two are a good combo. I've made a rod for my own PR back because I started using G-Mail much more when it (Big Pond) when down (same problem) and now I have mail coming in from two sources. I do transfer Big Pond to GMail automatically and vice versa but it can arrive 30-45 minutes later. But, the other way, G-Mail-Big Pond, arrives quicker. Right now, tho, I can't sent via T-Bird, only receive.

Matt, strange thing are a-happenin. T-Bird is now sending perfectly! I forgot it was telling stories and replied to a note and thought I couldn't remember telling me I couldn't send. So sent to myself and, voila. Makes a pen and paper sound delightful. Cheers A

register your bigpond email address as a sending address from Gmail. You can then use it to send @bigpond mails . Setting a single reply to address on both accounts will see mail coming back to your chosen account.

Finally the error you saw is from a single recipients server. While the source is not listed in SPAMHAUS any longer, if the recipient server only updates weekly then it takes a week to be cleared. Also not all mail servers use SPAMHAUS, although it is fairly popular. The likes of yahoo outlook and gmail I think role their own and don't subscribe.