Solving Failure To Forward Emails in Mozilla Thunderbird by Message Filters; Understanding Thunderbird Account Architecture
I faced a vexing problem with the otherwise excellent Mozilla Thunderbird email client. I was unable to forward emails to another account using the rules in Message Filters. I can normally forward emails. I can also execute other actions in the message filters except forwarding. It fails with a simple error message: "Sending of message failed". The simple solution lies in understanding the design of email accounts & message filters in Thunderbird, as described below in details.
BTW: At one point before solving this problem I even thought about switching to Evolution. And I am not alone. Several people posted the same problem on Mozilla forum without getting any solution.
Thunderbird allows you to configure multiple outgoing servers (SMTP).
Thunderbird also allows you to create multiple email accounts. Each account is associated with a POP3 account and one of the pre-configured SMTP server. However the Local folders account cannot be configured with an SMTP server.
In Message Filters menu you can create filters for one of the available email account(s) or Local folders. You can forward emails from any of the message filters associated with an email account as it has a corresponding SMTP server. However you cannot forward emails from message filters associated with the Local folders simply because they do have an associated SMTP server to send emails with.
The obvious solution is to create forwarding rules only with email accounts and not Local folders.
Filed under Enterprise Software, Headline News, How To, Open Source Software, Thunderbird, Web | 
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September 28th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Proposed solution, indeed, doesn’t work. Forwarding feature sometimes works, but the usual outcome is “Sending of message failed”. Very frustrating. At this point of time this feature is vital for me and I’m switching back to Microsoft Outlook after using Thunderbird for more than 3 years so far.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I am losing my mind trying to fix this and cannot!
I do not see any place to attach a particular SMTP setting specifically to forward emails. If I am able to fix it I will respond, if not I will need to look for another email client.
October 6th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Hi, regards the forwarding of mail, and local folders, In outlook express all smtp mail gets put into a “global” local inbox IMAP gets its own folders per account this is not optional.
In thunderbird the folder to use is optional, global or per account, just check or uncheck the box related to it in server settings on a per account basis.
As for forwarding with filters, this also has to be set on a per account basis, If you want to have all your email go to one account via forwarding you will be resending mail without good cause, as i said there is a global inbox option, If the email is not on the same server say from your site to snotmail, best idea would be to use the webmail or sites own mail forwarders, you usually have to set these for autoresponders anyway so the message doesnt get responded to and dumped.
This said it varies from server to server so my best advice, If you have problems with using your mail client and you have webmail contact your mail provider/hosting company for advice, most often there will be some sort of support or FAQ that you can refer to.
chris