Hi David,

That worked. That was my mistake putting the 587 in - sorry about that. You are amazingly patient! After I put the 465 in and tried to send - a box came up asking if I wanted to confirm a different SMTP number permanently (can't remember the details exactly) - and I clicked ok.

So I guess the only thing now is that she just has to ignore the message that comes up when opening the programme (start.thunderbird.net:443 uses an invalid security certificate).

I'm glad it worked. My suggestion now is that you copy the c:\users\herid\appdata\roaming\thunderbird to anywhere else. If you have one, I also suggest copying to a USB stick. Then, if on some future date, her PC or email gets corrupted, restoring it will require just copying from the backup. There would be lost messages, but she would at least have a working email again.

I've just discovered another issue )-:

The incoming mails are not showing who they are from. The sent messages do show who the recipient is. In the local folders (all the transferred emails from the last few years) both the in and out emails don't show a name. They just show the date, the size, and the subject line.

In Eudora OSE - I could see the names in the local folders.

I see it says 'Filter these messages' in the search box 'Ctrl+F' Would that help?

The tabs across the top are: status priority tag date size subject

(in today's successful sent ones the taps across the top are recipient date subject but that doesn't show in the local folder 'out' ones)

put mouse at top lf pane that lists messages. That line probably has words 'subject, date, and size'. right-click and check the items that you want displayed. You're at the point now, Rachel, where most of what you want to know will come with regular use. Your friend needs to take ownership here and start learning thunderbird.

Thank you very much. I will generally just look for online information now.

There is one unsolved thing - as with Eudora OSE, I get an error message that won't go away if I click on 'open remote content' in emails. I then have to go off line to get rid of the message. Maybe, like the opening error message (which closes easily) that will disappear when I move to later updates. I've attached an example below for clarity but for now I will tell my friend to avoid accessing 'remote content'.

Have a good week-end.

And thanks again.

DO you get the same error for all emails and all remote content? That URL seems unusual. Thunderbird also has a setting on whether to automatically allow remote content, since viruses can live there. Good luck.

Thanks for all your help. I did eventually get someone to sort it for me - my tech knowledge is just too limited! It's all sorted now.