ice dove/ thunderbird problems
 

Hi Guys, for some reason my macmail account on ice dove has stopped working. it keeps telling me the password is not correct. the password and username are correct because I can log into my icloud account. I have removed icedove with the terminal and then re installed it with apt-get install icedove
when i re install and reboot, the old mail accounts appear so perhaps Im not removing it completely or properly?
has anyone had this issue and if so what is the fix?
thanks guys

I have a hidden folder ".thunderbird" in my home folder that stores mail, profiles, etc. But that may not be deleted by uninstalling the program. Maybe there is a ".icedove" being left behind, or have you checked that already?

theres nothing in the folder that says icedove so i guess it cant be that

Are you sure? It would be hidden... so it starts with a dot (.icedove). When looking in your home folder with your file manager, use CNTL-H to toggle the hidden folders into view (and CNTL-H again to toggle off). You'll probably have a lot of hidden folders in your home folder.

icedove and thunderbird are the same program.
thunderbird stores all its stuff in a hidden .thunderbird folder; simply renaming that to e.g. .thunderbird~ should be sufficient to "start with a blank slate".
so for icedove, i'd look for a hidden .icedove folder in my $HOME.

thanks guys. I followed your directions and uninstalled icedove, control H displayed the hidden folders and i trashed the .icedove folder. I re installed and when i filled in my password it said it was wrong. Its not the wrong password. My apple id and username is what i log into my icloud account. It cannot be wrong? I have no idea why its telling me this.

I've used Thunderbird for many years, but I sure don't know anything about Apple/Mac stuff. Might your error say "username or password" or is it just "password" that is incorrect? My email provider sometime back made a change that required my username to be formatted as "username@domain.com" and it would no longer work otherwise. Something like that is the only guess I have for you at the moment. (Except, of course, the obvious CAPS LOCK issue! ;))

land of guessing:

- maybe apple doesn't allow the usage of email clients anymore? i.e. nomore IMAP support. it is possible.

- in icedove, did you also take care to enter the correct server settings (security, ports, outgoing server etc.)? instructions are usually found on the webpages of the email provider.

when i link any other accounts the information is automatically filled in by ice dove. it automatically finds and configures the email account. i have an account with earthlink and also one with my website. both work perfectly. the mac one worked perfectly until recently. Im stumped.

Username and password errors are often grouped together, but seems that ports, security settings, etc, would give a different error. As you noted, Icedove/Thunderbird does a nice job of discovery to get those settings right. Have you tried another email client, like Evolution, or Claws Mail, or whatever? Maybe your problem is with the Apple side, and not with Icedove at all. I don't mean logging into your Apple account, which you said worked. I really mean setting up another email to try to compare oranges to oranges... not Apples! (I crack myself up! ;))

If another email client fails also, maybe log into that Apple account and access your email settings there to change your password or username (or both). Your email password may be different than your login password.

I had the same experience when trying to set up my mac mail account in thunderbird. Interestingly enough, when I went to a Windows machine and entered the same information to set up the account in Outlook, it worked without issue. I agree with ondoho in suspecting that this is probably an Apple issue.

Post #8 is the likely culprit, probably to do with security settings. iCloud server settings for IMAP clients are found on Apple's website:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202304

The sentence "the mac one worked perfectly until recently", would indicate that SOMETHING has changed upstream, providing you didn't change anything on your local system.