I have a similar problem that started immediately when I upgraded to TB 38.2. I now get an error message when connecting to my university outgoing server. Have done many checks, restarts, re-installs, etc., but the problem persists. Prior versions of TB continue to work just fine on other computers. I have a feeling there is some sort of problem with the upgrade version. Similar problems have happened with past upgrades. I posted a question on this forum about it, but have received no responses yet.

I was using TB 38.1 and had the same problems. I don't recall that I had this with TB 38.0.

It is a serious problem. When I work from home on a Comcast network, every email has this problem. I have to send, cancel, send again and then it goes through.

Frustrating...

I have tried setting the "auto-detect proxies", but that didn't help either.

The behavior is almost always the same. I send the message, it hangs, I hit cancel, I resend and the message goes through okay. Similarly, when it comes to saving a copy of the message to sent mail, I usually have to retry twice and it works.

Attached is a message I am getting more frequently now. The message does appear to be saved in sent mail.

It seems like Thunderbird is losing contact with the SMTP or IMAP server, and having trouble reconnecting.

Ok, we have multiple people here with I think Multiple different problems. So please forgive me as I try and sort this mess.

@Seminolecapt 30.1 (which few people actually received and 39.2 have fixes for LogJam which disable insecure server connections. No security is still Ok, it is broken Cyphers and SSL/TLS that are affected by the change See http://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/logjam-and-thunderbird.html

I notice you have a support topic open here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1078984 I will not be addressing your issue here again.

@picone

I think your Gmail account is probably IMAP, but please confirm that. If it is IMAP I suggest you disable saving send mail entirely or at least modify the location the mail is saved to to Local folders from the IMAP account. The reason is Gmail saves outgoing mail to the send folder as it passes through the SMTP server. The issue that can arise is both are trying to update at the same time and random silly error messages are the out come.

The next issue is filtering of outgoing messages was introduced with V38. Have you created outgoing filters, or were you using an add-on in the past that might not be causing an issue as both try to do things with outgoing mail?

Thanks for a very prompt reply. But I am confused. My set up has been working for many years now. Why all of a sudden is it not working?

I am using a standard GMAIL account and connecting to it through IMAP. I am not sure what you want me to do in terms of disabling saving outgoing mail to the send folder.

Thunderbird saves mail to a Sent folder that resides on the IMAP server (I think). I need this because I connect to my mail from multiple machines and need to see the most recent one year of email on these machines. If I push Sent mail to a local folder (like I do for my archive), then I won't be able to see sent mail when I use different machines.

Gmail, of course, saves a copy to its own Sent Mail file. As far as I know, that is out of my control.

Attached is what my folder list looks like if that is any help.

Can you tell me more specifically what you want me to do?

Regarding the filters, my set of extensions is also attached. I have used these for several years without any problems.

I do not case if you settings worked a treat for a millennium. That are not working so well now. Part of that might be Thunderbird, but I think gmail is probably the one to have changed things. They are pretty good at changing things without warning.

I suggest you disable saving send mail entirely or at least modify the location the mail is saved to to Local folders from the IMAP account. The reason is Gmail saves outgoing mail to the send folder as it passes through the SMTP server. The issue that can arise is both are trying to update at the same time and random silly error messages are the out come.

I though that was clear. You don't do it because Google does it. At the very least what you are doing not will fill the sent folder with duplicate sent mail.

Go to Tools menu > account settings >copies and folders and remove the place a copy in for sent mail.

Send a mail and it will appear in your sent folder anyway.

I turned off Account Settings->Copies and Folders->Save a Copy

Of course, now it does not save a copy in my Sent folder, but does save a copy in Google's "Sent Mail" folder. So now I am totally reliant on that folder for copies of my sent mail. I have always maintained my own Sent mail folder.

I'll try this for a bit just to see if it solves the problem (so far so good).

I agree Google changes things behind the scenes - that is very frustrating.

I'll test this for a couple of hours and let you know.

Thanks very much for helping me with this.

This setting: "I turned off Account Settings->Copies and Folders->Save a Copy" seems to have resolved the problem.

Very nice! Thanks!

-Joe

Unfortunately, the problem has resurfaced tonight. It seems to happen when my email goes idle for a bit. If I am sending a bunch of emails, it seems okay. But if I don't send email for about 15 mins. and then go and send an email, it hangs with the message "looking up smtp server". If I hit cancel and then resend, it usually goes through.

This is no doubt a result of gmail doing things behind the scenes. I am fairly sure of this because Gmail is behaving differently these days. For example, my university uses gmail for its accounts (picone@temple.edu). When I send email from joseph.picone@gmail.com to picone@temple.edu, forwarding and other type things don't work. This is a result of Gmail trying to be too smart about duplicate copies of emails. We have had problems with this on and off for 6 years :(

However, not saving email to the Sent folder is also really annoying since I can't delete that folder - it must be there it seems. I am manually copying sent mail from Gmail's imap server because I ultimately want an archive of my older sent mails. So having to do all this manually really is not the greatest option.

Tonight's problems might just be that Gmail is having problems with their smtp server. But either way, the problem has returned... and it is a big issue since it doubles the amount of work you have to do to send a message.

Looking up the server indicates you have DNS issues. One thing other r4eport as being helpful is ditch their ISPs DNS and use Googles. that is IP 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. For instructions See https://www.opennicproject.org/configure-your-dns/how-to-change-dns-servers-on-a-mac/

However, not saving email to the Sent folder is also really annoying since I can't delete that folder -

Thunderbird normally saves mail to the sent folder. In the case of Gmail all outgoing mail is autoatically added to the Gmail sent folder and in the case of IMAP this syncs to the same folder in Thunderbird. So I guess your not using IMAP for your mail. Would that be the case? If you are using POP, right click the account, select settings and in the copies and folder for the account set it so save outgoing mail. It may be that for your EDU that Google do not save mail to the send folder. In that case do as for POP.

Thanks very much. I reset the DNS server to Google's and things seem to be okay.

I also restored the Tools->Account Settings->Copies and Folders->Place a copy in->Sent on Google. Let's see if the problem with collisions with the sent mail file on Google recurs (see the previous request asking me to disable this). I am using IMAP.

I'll post an update after a few hours of use today.

I appreciate the help.

Well, when I enabled the "Place a copy in", while using the new DNS server, the problem with "error copying to Sent mail" resurfaced. So it seems these two problems ("looking up smtp server" and "error copying to Sent mail") are unrelated.

I am now using Google's smtp server and have disabled the "place a copy in" option.

Things seem to be okay again. However, as stated before, I now manually extract Sent mail from Google's Sent Mail folder to archive a copy in my archived folders. The folder called "Sent" under Inbox is empty.

right click the account in the folder pane and select subscribe is the gmail sent folder subscribed?

That is an interesting feature. It allows me to streamline the folders shown, which I like.

Thanks.

I have a similar problem in a Win7 OS, but NOT with my gmail account.

I have my own domain name, and I've configured it for IMAP. I am using TB 38.3.0. Until I upgraded, I had no problem. Now Copy to Send folder hangs, even with no attachments.

I've tried all the "solutions" posted to the Web: I disabled all my add-ons; changed the "Place a copy" setting to "Other"; archived my Send folder; restricted my IMAP subscription list. I restarted TB after each change. Each "solution" works for a message or two, and then the problem reoccurs. Disabling "Place a copy" means that I don't have a copy of sent messages. That's not an option for me.

Any help would be appreciated.

But who providers your domain hosting?

And have you tried safe mode?

• Restart Thunderbird with add-ons disabled (Thunderbird Safe Mode). On the Help menu, click on "Restart with Add-ons Disabled". If Thunderbird works like normal, there is an Add-on or Theme interfering with normal operations. You will need to re-enable add-ons one at a time until you locate the offender.
• Restart the operating system in safe mode with Networking. This loads only the very basics needed to start your computer while enabling an Internet connection. Click on your operating system for instructions on how to start in safe mode: Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, OSX

If safe mode for the operating system fixes the issue, there's other software in your computer that's causing problems. Possibilities include but not limited to: AV scanning, virus/malware, background downloads such as program updates.

Thanks for the response, Matt.

I doubt it's my host, as I have no problem with my other devices, nor with webmail. I did notice two things not in my original post: (1) TB takes forever to load; and (2) the first one or two messages sent after reloading don't have issues.

Does this affect your recommendations?

Not really any change in my view. I would still like to know who provides your domain hosting, as that can be very relevant.

Thunderbird safe mode excludes add-ons and hardware acceleration in your graphics. Slowness of any sort or apparent hangs can be caused by Add-ons and Graphics.

Operating system safe mode can also be relevant when only one of a group of accounts is affected. This is only the case where the connection settings are not the same, but things like the use of SSL or different port numbers can see different affects on different accounts..

Just your statement, "Thunderbird takes forever to load" I know Thunderbird is slow starting. But a miserable interaction with an overly intrusive anti virus can see load times blow out to minutes as it tries to scan each and every file that Thunderbird opens on startup before handing it to Thunderbird. Av scans in reality take about 10 minutes per Gb, and it is not uncommon for an inbox to be a GB these days. or three.

ikewise the provider becomes relevant as for years there have been issues with those that use secureserver.net as their mail server. I do not know what the issue is, but it is with their servers. Then there is Google hosting. That is Gmail with a wrapper around it If it is a problem with Gmail it is a problem with Gmail hosting, but it also brings it's own issues.

What is your domain. With these hosted mail packages, I do like to check the domain configuration. While I do not really expect an issue here. Often the mail on the domain requires significant changes to make it actually work..

My domain is www.emanuellaw.com; which is hosted by siteground.com.

Come to think of it, they recently migrated to a new platform, and that's about when I started to notice issues. Here's the notice I received from them:

We would like to inform you that we will be performing a major upgrade of our shared hosting infrastructure and your account emanuellaw.com we will be performing a major upgrade on our shared hosting on Tuesday 13 October 01:00 CDT - 6:00 CDT.

What infrastructure changes are planned?

The upgrade that we will be performing involves both hardware and software changes. All changes involved are meant to make the whole platform faster, easily scalable, and with a drastically shorter recovery time in case of an incident. Here are some highlights:

   The new platform will run entirely on Solid State Drives (SSD), which are hundreds of times faster compared to regular hard disk drives. This will increase significantly the speed of the hosted websites.

   We will use a new virtualization method known as Linux Containers, which will allow us to provide a bigger pool of burstable resources and make your websites faster in case of traffic spikes.

   We are replacing the backup system in order to make the backup creation and recover lighter, faster and more flexible and thus reduce even further the time for data restore when needed.

You may read a detailed overview of the platform enhancements and the expected results in our blog:

Major Change of Our Shared Hosting Infrastructure Starts This Month

Important information:

Although the upgrade looks quite complicated due to the number of modifications it involves, it is actually straightforward and standard as a procedure. We have already set up the new platform and we will simply migrate your data from the old to the new platform. Here's what you should have in mind:

   We expect a downtime of a few minutes, up to 1 hour on the day of the migration.

   We kindly recommend you to not make any changes on your website on that day in order to prevent data losses.

   You don't need to make any changes in your settings. We will simply migrate your data on the new infrastructure and keep all your settings as they are.

   There will be no change in your billing. All the infrastructure upgrades we are making will result in no additional costs for you.

On migration day, please check your HelpDesk section in your User area for updates of the migration status.

Best Regards,

The SiteGround Team www.SiteGround.com