Using Norton's or other net nanny anti virus? They have a habit of getting in the way of the account wizard and preventing new accounts being set up.

Restart the operating system in safe mode with Networking. This loads only the very basics needed to start your computer while enabling an Internet connection. Click on your operating system for instructions on how to start in safe mode: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, OSX

Now try to set up the account. If the setup works it will have been other software on your computer that was the issue. Most likely anti virus products.

Did you enable access by 'less-secure apps' in the gmail settings? With that enabled and using OAuth authentication, enter your normal account password and allow the OAuth process to complete and set a token on your computer.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_Gmail_with_Thunderbird_and_Mozilla_Suite

Reply to Matt

There has been no need to apply your suggestion, as I solved the problem having read the texts provided by sfhowes.

Reply to sfhowes

I did enable “less-secure apps” in the Gmail settings. Having read the texts you provided, I again started to create a new account for my Gmail in Thunderbird. In the third step, the screen shows:

Server host name Port SSL Authentication Incoming IMAP imap.gmail.com 993 SSL/TLS OAuth2 Outgoing SMTP smtp.gmail.com 465 SSL/TLS OAuth2

In the last column (Authentication), there are actually six choices:

- autodetection; - normal password; - encrypted password; - Kerberos/GSSAPI; - NTML; - OAuth2.

For both “incoming” and “outgoing”, I changed “OAuth2” into “normal password” and the connection was made. Problem solved. (Previously, I did not dare to change anything in the column Authentication.)

I am glad you have it working. It is not google preferred method. Google opinion is not relevant, until you consider they are determined to make everyone use oAuth. Normal password is as far as Google is concerned "deprecated" and it will only work until they finally say they have had enough and refuse to allow you to set the "allow less secure apps" setting on their web site.

Also make sure you don't accidentally turn it off in one of their security checks. they auto set the setting to off in the security check so just clicking ok will turn it off and suddenly your mail will not download and you will get obscure error messages that will not leave you thinking you have messed up the security settings.

OK, at first I read a post at the beginning of the forum on gmail account verification that it was a bug. It mentioned that newer versions of Thunderbird could not authenticate gmail implying one needed an older version of Thunderbird to access your gmail account. I followed the link to the bug and read that it was resolved.

I keep reading about two step verification in gmail. That's so easy to verify. I simply turned off two step verification, but was still getting the unable to verify gmail account message.

Another simple solution was turn on "Allow Less Secure Apps" in Gmail. Think about that for a second. OK, I wanted to download all my old gmails to local so I could delete them from gmail and stop getting the nagging message to buy more storage space, so for the time being "less secure app" seemed tolerable.

Question and concern here though. I tired Microsoft's Outlook. It had no problem from the outset verifying my gmail account, plus it quickly downloaded over fourteen years of gmails and replicated all my gmail folders, filters, and more into my local folders.

I've been waiting for over an hour and Thunderbird has clunked to download only the first two year's worth of emails and is just beginning on the third year, and by the way has not reproduced a single gmail folder in my local folders.

I'm trying hard to love Thunderbird, it being open source and all, but for all the hype about security and recommendations by the Tor people, "Less secure," really?

@[silvanet]

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But I would guess that you have configured two different email protocols in outlook and Thunderbird. Having folder structure implies IMAP, having no folder structure implies POP. POP is stored locally and IMAP is stored on the server and downloaded in outlook on demand, so your 14,000 messages are probably only a list of email, not the content. But seriously this topic is not going to assist you as your issue is more complex I think than that originally posted here.

Thanks for your suggestion.

I know IMAP from POP. Since I wanted to save all of my old emails locally, I configured POP - on both Outlook and Thunderbird.

I just mentioned that Outlook downloaded all 61,397 old emails in a very short time. I've checked a number of newer ones selected as randomly as I could, varying the time I scrolled through the list offline, and I have them. I also checked if I got attachments, as I did as well.

Thunderbird has been downloading for hours and has just now gotten to 3,827. Also as I just mentioned, Outlook replicated my entire folder structure locally. Thunderbird has replicated none, just the inbox and an outbox.

If you're downloading a POP account with multiple email programs, you have to enable 'recent mode' in Server Settings:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_Gmail_with_Thunderbird_and_Mozilla_Suite

If Outlook is downloading other folders beside Inbox, you must have set it up as IMAP.

You may be right. I may have done that initially. I just checked the settings in Outlook and you're correct. I did set that one up as IMAP. I then created the Thunderbird POP connection because it was not verifying my gmail account. I was trying so many things that I forgot, but you're right. I'll look tomorrow at trying to save the folder locations in an ost file that maybe I can use to archive the downloads from a POP connection? Really appreciate your observation.