This is with now Claws Mail 3.11.1 and Debian Jessie; other versions of both Claws Mail and Debian had the same problem. The problem is that the recipient's address is never displayed when I type it in the To window. The only way it will display is if I hit the <Tab> key after I finish entering it. I need to be able to see what I type. This is the fourth install of Claws Mail for me, and the problem is always there. Does anyone have any suggestions?

A second, less annoying problem is that when I get mail, I am prompted for the password. After entering, I am told the connection failed - see
log. When I go to the log page, the messages are immediately received. No clue here either. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The password could be due to your configuration or perhaps a permissions matter, I'm not sure. They're worth checking.

The first problem is a mystery: I looked at Bugzilla and no-one else has that problem.

Perhaps all this is a Debian thing. You could get a .deb package of the latest version from a non-Debian repository, or compile it yourself:
http://www.claws-mail.org/git.php

Claws works properly in my debian installations. Both stable & testing.

I would probably try renaming the ~/.claws-mail directory first thing and try resetting the accounts, see if something in local settings just got messed up before anything else.

It can't be permissions; those have all been checked. I know Claws Mail runs correctly in other people's Jessie. I'm almost convinced that (To: line not displaying) that this is something internal to Claws Mail, since it's so peculiar and local, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. It's not a big deal, just another of the 10,000,000 little bugs in Linux (I too have seven distributions running) meant to annoy but not wound fatally.