Thunderbird stopped working
4 days ago Thunderbird stopped working for receiving and sending mail. My email is att.net. My Thunderbird program is 78. I am able to receive mail and send mail over the web at Yahoo or Att. I have been using Thunderbird for 20 years without a problem. I have tried resetting my password, deleting all passwords, deleting my account, creating a new account, and have uninstalled and reinstalled Thunderbird 78, none of which helped. When I uninstalled and reinstalled Thunderbird I lost all the mail in my inbox. My archived mail is still there. I used the automated as well as manually configured settings for the account for incoming and outgoing at Pop 3 inbound .att.net SSL and SMTP outbound .att.net SSL. When Thunderbird opens it asks me for my password. After entering it I get the following account error "Sending of password for user (my email)@att.net did not succeed. Mail server inbound.att.net responded: Server error - Please try again later. I also have a gmail account which works fine. I read about creating a secure key through AT&T. I am unable to do this a there is no "1.Go to Profile > Sign-in info." when viewing my profile. There is no "drop down" under "2. Select the email account that you want to get a secure mail key for. (You’ll find a drop-down menu at the top if you have multiple accounts.)". Since there is no drop down I am unable to "3. Scroll to Secure mail key and select Manage secure mail key". I called ATT support to have them try to walk me through getting a secure key. That was worthless as the agent suggested just using outlook from MS. These changes also occurred at the same time on my Android which is running a 10.0 OS. I would like to continue using Thunderbird as otherwise I will have to notify everyone that knows my Thunderbird address at att.net that I am changing mt mail address. any suggestions will be appreciated.
Chosen solution
See if this helps: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1275678
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Suluhisho teule
See if this helps: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1275678
Thanks for the reply sfhowes. In essence this solved the problem. I would add that I spent 2 hours with the "secure" tech dept. of AT&T to get my email working again basically using the steps described by wildrice. Additionally I might add there was: 1.No explanation by AT&T tech support as to why AT&T did not notify people using att.net that they were changing their security process. 2.It was not done to all customers at the same time as I noted wildrice had this problem in 12/23/19 3.AT&T's online support "Fix" for obtaining a "Secure Key" does not state that you have to be a AT&T customer with a account with them to set up a secure key. Fortunately for me I had a account with them through Direct TV. You cannot obtain a secure key as implied by AT&T through your web mail account either at the sign in window if you are using a PC nor anyplace on your web mail account after signing in to your web mail account under "Personal" when searching for the "drop down" they instruct you to look for in your "account"to set up the secure key. They are talking about your AT&T account, not your web mail account. This is confusing to anyone not knowing that the secure key is obtained only through a AT&T account. You MUST have a AT&T account to be able to obtain a secure key(16 digit password) as shown in wildrices screen shots which will become your new password to replace your old Thunderbird password that can be found in tools>options>security>passwords in Thunderbird. You have to edit your password only for incoming which is a POP 3 setting and leave the authentication set at "Normal Password" for both incoming and outbound in the settings for your Thunderbird account under tools. 4.I also use Firefox as my browser. I found out that you cannot access your AT&T account with Firefox, Edge, or IE. You must use Google Chrome to sign into your AT&T account. If you don't have an account with AT&T I have no idea how you can set up a "Secure Key". Perhaps you can contact AT&T and set up an account. Originally I set up my Thunderbird mail through yahoo.att.net about 20 years ago at the time Thunderbird was run by Mozilla.