Unable to write the email to the mailbox

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Revision as of 11:57, 9 October 2005 by Mozcerize (talk | contribs) (added category, minor tidying)
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This article applies to Thunderbird and Mozilla Suite.

When downloading new mail, you may receive the following error message: “Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox”. This is typically due to a bug in Thunderbird which can occur if it tries to download a message from a POP server which contains a certain combination of control characters in the message body. This problem only arises with certain types of POP server.

You can work around this bug by reading and deleting the message using webmail (so that Thunderbird won't see it as a new message), and then checking for new mail again. The only way to prevent it from happening is to use a POP server with better support for Thunderbird. If you are using your ISP as your email provider you might consider signing up for a free email account somewhere. This isn't meant to imply that there is anything wrong with your current POP server.