Thunderbird 52.2.0 update: issues with IMAP folders

The Thunderbird team has released Thunderbird 52.2.0 today, a new stable version of the popular cross-platform email client.

The new version of Thunderbird is already available through the email client's automatic update system. Most users who have it installed will have their Thunderbird client updated to version 52.2.0 automatically.

Update: The Thunderbird 52.2.1 update resolves the Gmail issue.

Problems with Gmail (folders not showing, repeated email download, etc.) introduced in version 52.2.0.

I ran into an issue with the new version, and would like to talk about it for a moment before I look at other things that are new.

The problem that I ran into was that some mailboxes, one regular Gmail account and one Google Apps Gmail account, would not list any folders whatsoever.

Update: A temporary fix for the issue is the following:

1. Select Tools > Options. If you don't see Tools, tap on the Alt-key first.
2. Go to Advanced, and click on Config Editor.
3. Search for check_
4. Set any of the following to false:
   1. mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new
   2. mail.check_all_pop_folders_for_new
   3. mail.server.default.check_all_folders_for_new
5. Restart Thunderbird.

While the account is still listed in the Thunderbird sidebar that lists all accounts and folders, it does not list information about emails, an inbox, spam folder or anything else. To make matters worse, a click on the account title lists a generic page that does not function at all.

Even stranger is the fact that this seems to affect one or two of the accounts randomly. I restarted several times to see if it would resolve the issue, but one or both of the accounts showed the same symptoms most of the time.

Related to that, it seems at the least, is that entire mailboxes or headers of emails are downloaded anew when Thunderbird starts.

I was not able to fix the issue. What I did was roll back the client to version 52.1.1. You can download that version from the Thunderbird download website, and install it over the current version to go back to the older version of the client.

Not ideal, as Thunderbird 52.2.0 includes security fixes, but better than working with a client that won't display some accounts properly in its interface.

This did fix the issue on my end however. I tried upgrading to Thunderbird 52.2.0 twice, and I ran into the display issue both times.

To download an older version of Thunderbird, head to the download page, and copy one of the download links to the clipboard by right-clicking on the link and selecting the "copy link address" or comparable option from the context menu.

The US English link for Windows looks like this for instance: https://download.mozilla.org/?product=thunderbird-52.2.0-SSL&os=win&lang=en-US

To download an earlier version, replace the version part with the earlier version. For the link above, that would be https://download.mozilla.org/?product=thunderbird-52.1.1-SSL&os=win&lang=en-US

What is new in Thunderbird 52.2.0

Thunderbird 52.2.0 ships with the following changes:

• Clicking on links with references/anchors where target doesn't exist in the message not opening in external browser
• Mailing list (group) not accessible from macOS or Outlook address book
• Calendar: Invitations can't be printed
• Messages sent via the Simple MAPI interface are forced to HTML
• Large number of blank pages being printed under certain circumstances when invalid preferences were present
• Multiple requests for master password when GMail OAuth2 is enabled
• Attachment not forwarded correctly under certain circumstances
• Detection of non-ASCII font names in font selector
• Embedded images not shown in email received from Hotmail/Outlook webmailer

There are also two unresolved issues, none of which describes the issue that I'm facing:

• On Windows, "Send to > Mail recipient" does not work. Workaround: Install the Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 redistributable runtime library or the Universal C Runtime for Windows Server.
• Links in news messages including "remove all expired articles" not working

Now You: Which email client do you use currently?

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