Thunderbird e-mail problem.
 

I recently switched to Mozilla Thunderbird as my e-mail "client" and have had no problems that I couldn't sort out until today.

Selecting "Get Mail" I got a note that it was downloading 1, 2, 3, 4 etc of 67 messages from my server, ( been a few days ) but stopped at no. 5 and presented this message ... Quote "The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving message. Mail server pop3.xtra.co.nz responded: problem retrieving message."

Xtra.co.nz is my ISP, and their man in the Outer Mongolia Call Centre advised that they don't support Thunderbird, go away - or words to that effect.

I opened my webmail and deleted two messages with very large attachments, but I still get the same "unable" message on my Thunderbird application.

Any clues to help me ?

ExSp33db1rd,

Try reconfiguring Thunderbird for IMAP rather than POP3, see if that helps.

Sorry, how do I do that ?

Ironically enough, whilst looking for your settings, I see your ISP has a page dedicated to helping Thuderbird users....

Set up your Yahoo Xtra email account in Thunderbird - Telecom New Zealand Help


IMAP settings are here

IMAP settings for Yahoo Xtra accounts - Telecom New Zealand Help

Although I would point out they do say IMAP is "unsupported".... so do at your own risk. No idea why they wouldn't support it. I reckon IMAP is by far the more superior option, I have not used POP3 since the dark days of the dial-up modem !

My experience with AOL which used to say 'not supported' of several options, modems, etc. was that they couldn't be bothered to create a script for their numpties to read out.


Whether or not you will miss that 'support', only you can tell.

I've had that problem, although not recently. In my case it was - as you suspected in your case - a dud message that had given the server hiccups. I ended up reading the mail via webmail on the server one by one, deleting the ones I didn't need to keep and forwarding the others to a different e-mail address. [Edit: gmail ones are free, IMAP, and work well]

Changing to IMAP may do it. If you go to the offending mailbox in Thunderbird and click on the name of the account in the left hand box - the line above "Inbox" - you should see a pop-up showing Email / Accounts/ Advanced Features. Click on "View Settings for this account" and then in the left hand box on "Server Settings" for the relevant account.

You should see "POP Mail Server" or "IMAP Mail Server". POP is Port 110, IMAP is Port 993. If yours is already IMAP, that will tell you that there's nothing to change (POP servers won't accept an IMAP connection).

Unfortunately, changing from POP to IMAP isn't a case of changing the Port Number. There's a Mozilla instruction here.

Thanks guys, after an hour on the phone to Telecom - who didn't tell me to go to their Thunderbird help page - probably didn't know about it - but I will now, they had to admit defeat and were unable to offer any suggestions, other than not to go to IMAP - as Telecom NZ don't support IMAP, they said !

I then uninstalled Thunderbird and re-downloaded it, and the problem has gone away - for now.

I still suspect that Telecom had a hand in it, tho' they denied it and said it must be a Thunderbird application problem that they couldn't help with.