Why does Thunderbird reject good passwords. How can I fix this so they are recognized by Thunderbird?
Every so often Thunderbird rejects my passwords and I have to go to the server and change them. It is getting tiring and I am looking for a sew service. I like Thunderbird because I can get all my emails in at one location making it really convenient as I do business via my emails also. Usually Thunderbird picks on one or two at a time but yesterday it chose to negate all of them at the same time. I read through threads where the servers are being blamed and I reject that after reading this while looking for a new service: "Mitchell Baker, Mozilla’s Executive Chairwoman, announced Monday that Mozilla would prefer to stop supporting Thunderbird, their popular email client, as it represents a continuing “tax” on other development projects within Mozilla. She stated that it is constantly in competition for resources that the leadership feels should be “laser-focused on activities like Firefox that can have an industry-wide impact”." I don't want to leave Thunderbird and I want a fix on how to stop this rejection of my passwords. I can go to my servers and get on just fine. I even went and changed my passwords today on one of them and still Thunderbird says they are not registered. So tell me how to fix this permanently so I don't have to go.
All Replies (4)
Well, I'm going to blame the server again. Or your connection, or any security software that screens your connection. If Thunderbird doesn't get a timely response to an attempt to connect to a server, it will assume the login is wrong (or maybe has changed) and so gives you a chance to put this right. Many users here would just persist without changing the password and eventually get through.
This is a frequent issue for me with one particular email provider, but all my others work fine. I can say in that case the server is the culprit.
Having changed a password, do you remove the expired ones from your password store? Having old ones in the store itself can cause problems.
Zenos said
Well, I'm going to blame the server again. Or your connection, or any security software that screens your connection. If Thunderbird doesn't get a timely response to an attempt to connect to a server, it will assume the login is wrong (or maybe has changed) and so gives you a chance to put this right. Many users here would just persist without changing the password and eventually get through. This is a frequent issue for me with one particular email provider, but all my others work fine. I can say in that case the server is the culprit. Having changed a password, do you remove the expired ones from your password store? Having old ones in the store itself can cause problems.
First I have reused the same password over and over and it still doesn't work. I have gone to the server logged in and tried again and still it doesn't work. How do you remove the expired ones? It's weird that it will work for months and then boom not work again. This time it canceled out all my passwords which is really strange because it has never done this before.
Just because they say it is wrong password, does not necessarilly mean the password is wrong.
Sometimes, particulary if you use pop mail accounts, the server will not recognise the password until you logon to their webmail account, which means you get to see their adverts. In some cases, you need to use a captcha to login to verify it really is you.
This may also occur if the IP address has changed - perhaps you were travelling, but not necessarily and the server is wondering if this really is you accessing the account. So you could say it is part of a security measure.
The other day I could not logon to btinternet.com; I kept getting a 'Mail server <mail account> reponded: Server error - please try again later'. Very annoying. I could logon to webmail which is BT yahoo mail via bt.com and MYBT account. However, they had got the yahoo servers out of synch with bt server, so I had to clear browser cache use this https://login.yahoo.com/ to reset password to the same one I was already using to access webmail and in thunderbird. Suddenly all worked again.
Sometimes, they may be updating their servers or moving to another and a temporary issue can occur.
Sometimes, eg: after a thunderbird update, your Firewall, possibly part of your AV program, can get confused and not realise the updated thunderbird is still thunderbird and stop internet access until Firewall is fixed.
It is also possible that a server can change server settings or change the username to be the full email address when previously it only used the part before the '@'.
The list can go on, but the point is, it is usually a server issue and the solution is not always that simple to track down. Asking techie help on ISP forums etc is not always helpful as they are only concerned with webmail.
All passwords have to be created/modified etc via webmail account or it can be shared server and one is out of synch like in my case, so the login was a different webpage login. Then if password is altered, you update the stored on in Thunderbird.
If you have set up Thunderbird Password Manager to save the passwords then they are located here:
- 'Menu icon' > 'Options' > 'Options' > 'security' > 'Passwords' tab
- click on 'Saved Passwords' button.
- click on 'Show Passwords' button
- right click on appropriate lines and select 'Edit Password'
- fully remove the stored one before retyping password.
- click on 'Close'
- click on 'OK'
It would be helpful if you provided some info. Post this info:
In Thunderbird Help > Troubleshooting Information Do NOT select checkbox 'include account names' click on 'Copy text to clipboard' button
In this forum question, right click in a 'Post a Reply' text box and select 'Paste' Edit/Remove all info on fonts and printers, but nothing else.