Thunderbird FAQs

I don’t see any of my folders.

• Drag slider on left hand side to show folders.

I see my folders, but they’re in a different order than before, and I’m not sure if they’re all there.

• Use the “All Folders” view rather than “Smart Folders”. You can click the left and right arrows at the top of the Folders column on the left-hand side to switch Folder views. “All Folders” is the traditional view. You can also go to the View menu, select Folders and choose the folder view you’d like to see in Thunderbird.

Thunderbird is really slow!

• Check the Google App Status dashboard first to check if there’s a known issue with Google mail. If not, have the user unsubscribe from the All Mail folder, which can take up a lot of memory. (Have them right-click on the e-mail account on Thunderbird, i.e. hdtier1@hamilton.edu in the left-hand column, then select Subscribe. Select the [Gmail] folder, then click on All Mail and click Unsubscribe.)  You can also have them try rebuilding the index by right-clicking on a folder, selecting Properties, then choosing Rebuild Index. If the problem persists over a period of time, we’ll need to get their server address and report it to Google.

I don’t see the icon that I’m looking for on the toolbar

• Customize your toolbar to add the icon to the toolbar and reset the toolbar to default. (Right-click any grey space at the top of the Thunderbird window, select Customize... and choose from there.)

I have other issues with Thunderbird that weren’t addressed here

• Try searching the Thunderbird Support page (external) for the problem. Also, the MozillaZine wiki has a database of frequent Thunderbird issues.