I have Thunderbird 38.2.0 installed on my Macbook (10.10.3 Yosemite). For some reason my account passwords have disappeared. I cannot download new mail anymore for all accounts, pop3, exchange or imap. This all worked until last weekend. Internet still works on the laptop. All these accounts work on other systems, so it's not related to the mailservers.
- When checking mail, no password is asked, nothing happens.
- When I open Preferences > Security > Passwords > Saved Passwords, the list is empty.
- When I try to set a master password, it fails. (Although this is not the issue for me, I tried it, noticed it didn't work, and it seems related so I mention it here.)
- If passwords are deleted, I would expect to get a popup request for the password, but nothing happens.
- The OSX keychain had some (probably older) pop3 and smtp passwords for these accounts, from last year. Back then I used Apple Mail, but I migrated last year to Thunderbird. I deleted these keys to see if that resulted in something, but nothing happened.
I copied the mail folder (using cp -rp
), so I could mess with the folder and go back if needed. Then I restored a backup of the mail from before the problems began to a temp folder. For each test situation I copied the original or backup version of the mail, so I could go back to an identical situation if needed.
- I copied the backup to the
Library/Thunderbird
folder and opened Thunderbird. No change. - I installed Thunderbird 38.0.1 with the backup - no change.
- I tried the 40 beta version - no change.
- I used
chown
to reset owner - no change.
I have no idea where to reset the passwords.
How can I get may email working again?
Rebuild profile
One of the solutions I have in mind is to rebuild the profile:
- Move the Thunderbird folder, forcing TB to create a new profile.
- Recreate all accounts.
- Move back the mail folders.
I haven't done this yet. I see many folders with old accounts, including pop.googlemail-1.com, pop.googlemail-2.com etc, and don't know if these get linked to the right account, if that matters, or if this messes up something else.
Any input is valued!