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Thunderbird 52.6.0 very slow to autofill email addresses after upgrading from El Capitan to High Sierra

  • 2 replies
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  • Last reply by kreutz

kreutz
kreutz
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After using Thunderbird happily for eons, I upgraded from El Capitan to High Sierra (macOS 10.13.3), and suddenly Thunderbird 52.6.0 is VERY slow to autofill email addresses - after typing a character or two, I get a 5-10 second beach ball. It does work eventually (supplying a menu of possible email addresses), but it's absurdly slow. My work flow grinds to a halt. My address book is probably not particularly large; I'm using Princeton Universoty's LDAP server (and have for decades).

Any Ideas? Many thanks!

After using Thunderbird happily for eons, I upgraded from El Capitan to High Sierra (macOS 10.13.3), and suddenly Thunderbird 52.6.0 is VERY slow to autofill email addresses - after typing a character or two, I get a 5-10 second beach ball. It does work eventually (supplying a menu of possible email addresses), but it's absurdly slow. My work flow grinds to a halt. My address book is probably not particularly large; I'm using Princeton Universoty's LDAP server (and have for decades). Any Ideas? Many thanks!

Chosen solution

Thanks for the suggestion. I just upgraded macOS 10.13.4 - and Thunderbird 52.7.0 - and found no improvement.

However, on a lark, I switched from Princeton University's LDAP server to "Use my global LDAP server preferences for this account", and the problem was solved. Clearly it's a PU LDAP issue. Then, because I'm off campus right now, I set up a VPN connection into the campus network and reconfigured Thunderbird to use PU's LDAP server again. Now it works fine.

Bottom line: there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with Thunderbird or High Sierra. Instead, it appears that Princeton has altered it's LDAP server (perhaps hidden it behind a firewall), and the Thunderbird's email lookup delay is caused by trying to talk to an unresponsive server.

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Wayne Mery
Wayne Mery
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Does it improve if you update to 10.3.4??

kreutz
kreutz Question owner
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Chosen Solution

Thanks for the suggestion. I just upgraded macOS 10.13.4 - and Thunderbird 52.7.0 - and found no improvement.

However, on a lark, I switched from Princeton University's LDAP server to "Use my global LDAP server preferences for this account", and the problem was solved. Clearly it's a PU LDAP issue. Then, because I'm off campus right now, I set up a VPN connection into the campus network and reconfigured Thunderbird to use PU's LDAP server again. Now it works fine.

Bottom line: there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with Thunderbird or High Sierra. Instead, it appears that Princeton has altered it's LDAP server (perhaps hidden it behind a firewall), and the Thunderbird's email lookup delay is caused by trying to talk to an unresponsive server.