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I've been recently having some problems with Thunderbird (38.2.0). I'm using Gmail and Hermes (Cambridge Uni's email service) IMAP/SMTP. I receive emails through, but they are often delayed. For example, I got a pop-up saying I had a new email at about 16:10 this afternoon, but the email's time-stamp says 15:26. (I had Thunderbird open all that time - or at most laptop in sleep for a couple of minutes.) Other times I'll look in the morning and I'll get emails through in the morning that were sent the previous afternoon or evening.

This is obviously rather awkward when it's time sensitive! Any ideas what could be causing this?

I have recently changed from Kaspersky to AVG. (Kaspersky isn't (/wasn't) fully compatible with Windows 10, and I could only have it on one of my computers, so I've just got AVG Free until they fix it.) I've turned off the email scanner, because it always popped up saying "Email Scanner Error - cannot scan encrypted emails" - or something similar to that. This doesn't happen every time, otherwise I'd just temporarily turn off my antivirus; I don't really fancy having it off for a few days while I test!

Any advice would be most appreciated.

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  • Are you using IMAP or POP3? With POP3 gmail may check your email account only about once per hour!
    – Gantendo
    Nov 13, 2021 at 2:08
  • I was using IMAP, but this was over six years ago now. So I can't really follow-up anything, sorry!
    – Sam OT
    Nov 14, 2021 at 15:33

2 Answers 2

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Many mail systems have mail filters (also called milters), antivirus scans, and even several hops (with their possible corresponding milters, antivirus scans, etc.) which make the e-mail be "delayed" for some time. The 15:28 timestamp tells you when the mail was sent, but as I told you, depending on the sending domain, it might have a long way before arriving to the destination e-mail.

In any case, this seems more a mail server configuration issue (if so) rather than a Thunderbird issue.

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  • I, too, would have thought that it was a problem with my configuration, but I've had Thunderbird for years, and it's not a problem I remember having before...
    – Sam OT
    Sep 29, 2015 at 15:36
  • You could check on the Gmail web interface if the mail timestamp and reception time match the ones you have in Thunderbird - In that case you can discard a Thunderbird problem
    – nKn
    Sep 29, 2015 at 15:37
  • It's both Gmail and Hermes (Cambridge Uni's emails). I just got an email through Gmail that came exactly when it should. Now I think about it, it's more often (but not exclusively) Hermes - I'll update the question. In the case above, the time-stamp is 15:26. (My mistake previously: Thunderbird says 15:26 -- not 15:28 -- but came through around 16:10.)
    – Sam OT
    Sep 29, 2015 at 15:42
  • I think it's probably due to some additional filters that has Hermes for outgoing mail, additionally it might have som hops... I can't say more specificly because I don't know how it is configured, but it's likely.
    – nKn
    Sep 29, 2015 at 15:46
  • For outgoing mail? I haven't seen how long it takes my emails to be received by others, so don't you mean incoming?
    – Sam OT
    Sep 29, 2015 at 15:47
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Nailed this after four painful hours of trying everything I found online.

Do this:

  • Go into Chrome.
  • Click on your profile icon in the top right corner. The browser one, not the one inside the page if you have both.
  • Click on "Sync is on".
  • Click on "Review your synced data".
  • Click on "Clear data".

That's it! It's not a Thunderbird issue. It's a Chrome/Gmail sync issue.

I even went so far as to install Mailbird as an alternative to Thunderbird, but Mailbird had the same issue--which made me realize it wasn't Thunderbird at all.

I've even found that you can just do this mid-issue. Don't even have to stop and restart any of Thunderbird or Chrome or Sync. Just do the purge.

Rock on!

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