The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) was lost in the middle of the transaction. Message eventually displayed (unchanged) is: Again, I could receive emails OK, but old sending problem remains. I then started TB using the old profile, and copied the new POP and SMTP server settings to the old account. New profile created the account automagically, and everything worked fine. If it didn't work, then I could at least go back to AOL, toss the ball into their court again, and see if they can make it work with a fresh copy of Thunderbird.
Then I could test it very quickly, and if it worked, somehow graft it to the data in the saved profile? I can rebuild profiles, etc., without too much effort, but the archived mail folders are critical. What would happen if I reinstalled TB altogether, and, using the default profile, set up the email account again. At this point I'm not sure what will be saved and what will be deleted if I delete "settings only", but I'll see. With your helpful advice, I'm planning now on saving my entire profile and deleting the account settings, and see what happens. I agree it's likely that their suggestion was a last-ditch effort on AOL's part. I use POP, mostly since I do a LOT of searching of archived mail, and it's faster to do it locally. I have to admire their chutzpah, since they sent me a "how was our service?" survey today. Ultimately, they suggested I hire a 3rd-party support service, implying strongly that Thunderbird was the problem, and since I could send email using AOL's web email service, they were washing their hands of me. In fact, I'm not sure if the old settings still worked either, but in any case AOL support gave up after an hour and a half of effort at two levels of support. After making the changes, I could no longer send email.
How to reinstall outlook without losing emails upgrade#
A couple days ago AOL announced they had made changes requiring me to upgrade my settings in Thunderbird. It is one email, the only one I've ever had, now close to 35 years - GTE became Verizon, and Verizon sold their email business to AOL, thus the chain. You say "GTE/Verizon/AOL email account" - is this one account or several? How come they are ''all'' broken? Some of this might be restored by reinstating the original Local Directory. Whilst no messages are lost, it's a pain to have to repeat all the little tweaks one does filters, folder layout, address book association and de-association. It would be my last resort, though I have to say that I have done this myself recently with an IMAP-connected outlook account which had probably failed because the smtp server had been reconfigured, and there is no easy way to get Thunderbird to discover the settings without tearing down and setting up the account afresh. I rather think that advice to delete and re-instate accounts is something of a desperate guess at what to do. If you choose to preserve the data, then you can set up the account again and then re-select the "Local Directory" that the original account used. When you delete an account, if that's how you decide to go, at the point of deleting it you are offered a choice about deleting just the settings or both the settings and the data. You say "GTE/Verizon/AOL email account" - is this one account or several? How come they are all broken? And you could log in to the webmail portal offered by your email provider to check what's there. If IMAP then there is no real need to rescue everything because it is on the server.