Thunderbird not downloading all messages

[brad3260]

Hello, I've been having a problem lately where I will start Thunderbird in the morning and no e-mails will download from during the night but when I look in my webmail, I see new e-mails. They will eventually download, sometimes as much as five days later. While Thunderbird is running and somebody emails me, those download right away. I've looked and looked on the internet for a solution but no luck! It's an IMAP account and I'm running Thunderbird 17. Anyone have any idea?

[DanRaisch]

Do you have Thunderbird set to check for new messages at startup? Find that setting under Tools->Account Settings->Server Settings.

[brad3260]

Yes, they don't even download if I hit "Get Mail"

[DanRaisch]

First backup your profile -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup but do not compact folders as recommended in that link.
Close Thunderbird and navigate to your Profile Folder ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Folder ). Find the files with the extension msf, such as Inbox.msf. Note that there will be sets of two files with the name but only one of these will have the MSF extension. Delete the files with the MSF extension. Restart Thunderbird, compact all folders, and see if things are back to normal. Note that the MSF files do NOT contain your messages. They are, for lack of a better term, an index file and will be recreated by Thunderbird as required.

[Ah, Clem]

I think I may be getting more dense with advancing age. But this is just far to complicated for me.

Deleting the .msf extension files sounds like the kind of thing I need to do also (same symptom here). But I can't find any files ending in .msf

I'm running OS X 10.7.5
Thunderbird 17.0

I could send you what it says in the error console, if that would be helpful.

[Ah, Clem]

Looking in the <user>/library/Thunderbird/<cryptic filename>.default/mail folder, I see .msf suffix files for some of the accounts. Moving those elsewhere (temp folder) doesn't result in them being recreated.

I wish somebody would write a simpler mail client.

[RobertJ]

I think I may be getting more dense with advancing age. But this is just far to complicated for me.

Deleting the .msf extension files sounds like the kind of thing I need to do also (same symptom here). But I can't find any files ending in .msf

I'm running OS X 10.7.5
Thunderbird 17.0

I could send you what it says in the error console, if that would be helpful.

Hijacking another's thread is not allowed. Since the OP is on Win and you are on Mac start a new thread describing your issue clearly.



.

[DanRaisch]

* What is the exact wording of the error message (if any) that you are receiving?
* How is that mail account set up, as POP or IMAP?
* Is your mail service from an ISP, corporate e-mail system or Web-based?
* Do you regularly compact your folders or was that done only in response to this issue?

[cvrkswami]

I am using version 17.03.
operating system windows 7
I am using a ISP for my mail service. Having contacted them earlier they advised that service is ok and asked me to check upthe configuration.
When logged in I am able to see downloading 1 to 18 messages in the status bar
but the messages are not getting downloaded to inbox.

[cvrkswami]

further details to my earlier post:
I do not receive any error message, but the words downloading disappear in the status bar after some time.
the mail account is POP
I do not compact my folders

[DanRaisch]

Close Thunderbird. Log onto the web mail page of your ISP and delete the oldest message in the inbox that has not yet been downloaded to Thunderbird. (Or move it to a server folder other than the inbox.) Launch Thunderbird and try again to "Get Mail".

Sometimes a message with a malformed header can block Thunderbird from properly reading and downloading it from the server and that can prevent the download of the other messages in the server inbox.

Also, compacting is something that needs to be done regularly in any email program, particularly with POP type accounts. We recommend weekly, but many of us do it daily. When done often enough, it can be an extremely fast process. Not doing so can lead to problems like those you are experiencing. See this about how to and why it's so important: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

If you haven't been doing that before, first back up your Thunderbird Profile -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup then compact all folders. If 'compacting' them (and leaving a long enough time for the process to complete) doesn't fully resolve the problem then do the following on each account:

Close Thunderbird. Find and delete all of the files with the .msf file extension in your profile folder/Mail http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Folder#Thunderbird including your Local Folders, especially if you are using the global inbox. You must have "View hidden files and folders" on http://spywarewarrior.com/viewtopic.php?t=272 and you need to set "hide extensions for known file types" off (just below View Hidden) if you are using Windows. These are your mail summary files and do not hold any messages themselves. They will be rebuilt the next time you open each folder in Thunderbird. Compact all your folders when you have completed this.

To avoid this happening again, see the tips in these articles:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_worki ... derbird%29
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Performance_%28Thunderbird%29

[skrim]

For what it's worth, I had the same problem. Some days Thunderbird would just stop downloading messages without any error messages, then all of a sudden something would uncork the download flood. Trashing the msf's etc didn't help, not re-entering the account info either. Just realized that it seems to have something to do with my ISP. Got myself a VPN connection, and voilá, Thunderbird downloads everything every time.

[dsilva]

This is very frustrating... my preferred mail client of the last 10 years and got a message base of 36GB now stop in downloading mail. I have to do a back up in my SSD copying all mail files that are already synced on my dropbox and will erase MSF. I hope could be the problem. I try PostBox 3 but got the same issue. No new email could be downloaded. Error message no more space

[DanRaisch]

dsilva, how is that account (or accounts) set up in Thunderbird, as POP or IMAP?
How many messages in the Inbox folder of the account(s)?
Do you regularly compact the message files? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_: ... ng_Folders

[dsilva]

Hello all are POP
And always compact folder.

Dan

dsilva, how is that account (or accounts) set up in Thunderbird, as POP or IMAP?
How many messages in the Inbox folder of the account(s)?
Do you regularly compact the message files? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_: ... ng_Folders