Thunderbird stuck on copying message to sent folder – solved (on mac osx)

I have been using thunderbird on mac osx 10.6 .5 but always received this problem of copying message to sent folder.

I need to use thunderbird because it is the only mail client that gives me good experience with hotmail by showing all my mails in original folder format as of hotmail and shows me all my folders too.

However, whenever i send an email or reply to any email using thunderbird, once it’s delivered to the receiver, the popup keeps stucked and waiting at the screen saying “copying message to sent folder“. Quite irritating isn’t it! First cancel this popup then close the mail that I just created and then another click when it asks to save the mail in drafts etc! Arggghhhh!

Well, honestly speaking, just due to this reason, I markedly reduced my email sending, due to the unnecessary irritation!

However, here we will discuss how to fix this issue.

The first solution is the one that I personally use and found it to be working perfectly for me. The other one is the one that I found while searching on Google but it DID NOT solve it for me!

So if you want to solve the issue with thunderbird stuck on message saying “copying message to sent folder” on either mac osx or any other operating system, follow these solutions to solve this error:

1. Uncheck option for saving emails

Best way to solve the issue is to stop thunderbird from saving the sent messages to the sent folder. Wait! but you want to keep a copy of your sent messages to your sent folder… ?? right?? here’s the trick. Once you use your server (checked and confirmed on hotmail in my case) it does copy the message to the sent folder. So even if thunderbird don’t save your message to sent folder itself (which probably is the reason of conflict and causes this error of it being stuck on copying message to sent folder) your message will still be copied in the sent folder.

To disable mozilla thunderbird from trying to copy the message to the sent folder , follow this:

1. run thunderbird
2. goto: <top menu> > tools > account settings
3. in the popup windows, left column, select: copies and folders
4. disable the option under when sending messages, automatically; saying: Place a copy in
5. Click ok and then ok again
6. Quit and restart your mozilla thunderbird and test.

However, once you send the message, thunderbird will not show it in the sent folder, why? because according to thunderbird you didn’t chose to save the message in sent folder, so it doesn’t save or update it. But on next synchronization it will show your message in sent folder.

To confirm this, you can send a test email and then quit thunderbird, launch it again and click on Get mail to synchronize it with your online server and voila! you can now see the last email in your sent mail folder.

2. Change maximum number of server connections to cache to 1

This method didn’t work for me, but as it has been shared on net, here it goes:

1. launch thunderbird and in top menu goto: tools > account settings
2. in left column select server settings and then on that page click on advanced button
3. change the value for maximum number of server connections to cache from 5 (or any number) to 1
4. click ok and then ok again
5. close thunderbird and reopon. Test and confirm if it solves the issue or not

This way may work for you (although it didn’t for me). However, if the first method solved the issue for you (including that it saved the messages in your sent folder automatically too) then probably you are done and don’t need any further intervention to solve your thunderbird being stuck on copying message to sent folder popup message while using hotmail or any other service.