What "search message windows"? perhaps a screen shot would clarify.

This is what comes up on most but not all of the folders under Local Folders. It doesn't seem to be determined by how many messages are in the particular folder.

To get the messages in the folder to show, I just enter a space in the search block and hit Enter and all the messages in the folder come up.

It is not a critical problem. It is just sometimes annoying.

Thanks for the reply

right click (command click) the folder and select properties and repair. Might just be an indexing issue.

Right-click the folder and selecting repair doesn't seem to help, I've tried that many, many times. it doesn't seem to be an index problem.

Thanks...

Thanks for your reply.

They aren't accounts. They are just folders where I am storing emails from my online Bible students until they complete their study. The folder titles give their name, their email address, and the date they began their study.

looking at the image more closely, the path at the bottom in the status bar does not appear to be the same as the one selected. Relevant? I really have no idea. Is it only your bible study folders that are affected?

Have you tried restarting with add-ons disabled? It is on the help menu.

The problem appears, at times, in all the folders; not just the Bible student folders.

First, the path on the status bar is the last folder where a message was filed. It is put there by an addon called Nostalgy which lets me use the keyboard to file incoming messages. I disabled it, but it didn't seem to have an affect.

The little icon on the left is for the FoxClocks extension.

I restarted Thunderbird in safe mode and I'm sad to report that the problem remained.

For what it might be worth, the problem appears to be random. Sometimes it happens in a folder, but later when I go back to that same folder it will open normally. Then, later, the Search Messages screen appears when it is opened.

Please understand that there are a lot of messages on file in these folders; probably two or three thousand. I expect it to take some time to index all those files, but time doesn't seem to heal the problem.

Something else that maybe might help: this problem came on after an update of Thunderbird...don't remember which one.

Also, I'm on a Win 7 Pro, 64-bit, computer and after a recent update of Win 7, when I delete a .wav file, it is deleted immediately and does not go to the recycle bin. That never happened before, either.

I am an old dude and to me it appears like a buffer is full or something.

Thanks for all the help.

lets try another experiment. Restart windows in safe mode with networking and then try Thunderbird. but it may well be your anti virus that is the root of the intermittent fault and a reboot in safe mode will either work or not. A fix depends on the results.

It is your mention of an update that leads me down this path. Most anti virus program have special rules they apply to certain programs. Mail programs in particular. An update in the mail program version number can upset this delicate balance leaving the anti virus scanning things at very inappropriate times. So it might not be a buffer, it may be timing. Thunderbird can not get the file because the anti virus is playing with it. The search works, because it reads a different file.

Hummm...you may have found the culprit <GRIN>

When I was trying to setup to boot into safe mood, I disabled real-time protection from Malwarebytes antimalware and the problem went away. It looks like the latest version of Malwarebytes, which came about just about the time all this started, might be scanning the emails and causing the conflict with Thunderbird.

Any ideas about how I can run both and they not interfere with each other?

With anti virus programs we just recommend creating an exclusion for the Thunderbird profile folder and refer the people to the AV vendor. Malwarebytes (my experience is the free version) is limited. but this looks to be the information you need https://helpdesk.malwarebytes.org/entries/23474946-How-do-I-stop-Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware-from-blocking-scanning-a-file-or-program-that-I-trust-

Note that the exclusion should be for your mail and IMAP mail folders. To get the path to them. Open troubleshooting information on the help menu and select the show folder button. As those folders contain no executable files, or files that would be opened by anything but Thunderbird there should be very very little risk from such an exclusion (I will not say none. Because it is always the exemption that proves the rule)

Thanks so much for the help. I've excluded the mail folders in Malwarebytes. My Local Folders are on different drive from my profile folder. All my incoming mail is filtered through Google mail, so it is even less likely there will be an "exception."

BTW, just in case you need to know, my virus program is MS Security Essentials.

Again, thank you so very much for the help!!

Friday, July 11th. The problem has returned??? I have exempted my local mail folders from both MalwareBytes and my antivirus, Microsoft Security Essentials. Now what? Possibly need to exempt something else, maybe.

How is this other drive connected? Network and USB connected drives can simply be to slow for Thunderbird of function correctly. Particularly when multi Gigabyte files are being read.

It is not a physical disk; just a separate partition (F:) on a single 1 terabyte disk. The disk has C:, E:, and F: partitions. There is plenty of empty disk space in all the partitions.

The local disk files are multi-gigabyte in size. Don't know what to do about that.

Something I've noticed: when it happens on one folder, then it happens on all the folders, even if some of the previous folder opened correctly.

Thanks ...

Thanks for your reply.

I don't have that add-on. We did try starting Thunderbird in safe mode and that did not stop the problem. It is weird!

Thanks...