Thunderbird provides no way to interact with the interface after adding an account.

[Martin Constantino–Bodin]

Hi,
I’ve tried to add an account from an Office account. The default suggestion from Thunderbird is to use Owl, a paid add-on, which is probably the best solution for non-technical users.
I however am a technical user and don’t mind just setting what I’m being asked to do here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-services/ict/self-service/connect-communicate/email/use/thunderbird/
After all the setting done, I just click on the button “Done”.

What I expected:
Thunderbird closing the setting window and adding the account.

What I got:
Thunderbird not closing the setting window, but greying all its buttons but “Cancel”. After waiting some time, still the same. I eventually clicked on “Cancel”. The account was not added, but the new SMTP was added. It seems that the addition the new account stopped in the middle of the process, and that Thunderbird did not catch the error or whatever happened.

Regards,
Martin.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: thunderbird 1:60.8.0+build1-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-1057.66-oem 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-1057-oem x86_64
AddonCompatCheckDisabled: False
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.7
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: martin 2009 F.... pulseaudio
BuildID: 20190705191649
Channel: Unavailable
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Oct 5 12:00:38 2019
DistributionChannelDescriptor:
 # This is the distribution channel descriptor for the OEM CDs
 # For more information see http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DistributionChannelDescriptor
 canonical-oem-somerville-bionic-amd64-20180608-47+berlinetta-cfl-r+X77
Extensions: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
ForcedLayersAccel: False
IfupdownConfig:
 # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
IncompatibleExtensions: Unavailable (corrupt or non-existant compatibility.ini or extensions.sqlite)
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-08-28 (37 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic" - Build amd64 LIVE Binary 20180608-09:38
IpRoute:
 default via 192.168.1.1 dev wlp59s0 proto dhcp metric 600
 169.254.0.0/16 dev wlp59s0 scope link metric 1000
 192.168.1.0/24 dev wlp59s0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.6 metric 600
Locales: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
PrefSources: prefs.js
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
Profiles: Profile0 (Default) - LastVersion=60.8.0/20190705191649 (In use)
RunningIncompatibleAddons: False
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Themes: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 07/23/2019
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1.2.3
dmi.board.name: 07C17G
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.2.3:bd07/23/2019:svnDellInc.:pnPrecision5540:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn07C17G:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:
dmi.product.family: Precision
dmi.product.name: Precision 5540
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Thank you for the report Martin.
This sounds like it might be a general Thunderbird bug (not specific to the Ubuntu packages).
Would you mind filing an upstream bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi#h=dupes%7CThunderbird, and sharing the link to it here?

[Martin Constantino–Bodin (martin-bodin)]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:69.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/69.0

Steps to reproduce:

In a nutshell, I tried to add an account for my University. They use Microsoft Office internally, but they provide a general setting. Thunderbird suggested to use Owl, which is probably reasonable for most users. However, as it wasn’t my personal choice to use a Microsoft account, I did not wanted to pay for an add-on that my employer would probably not reimburse. So I wanted to add it manually. It seems that the interface got into an unexpected state in between.
That issue has already been reported on Launchpad, and I am attaching this link for cross-references: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1846877 I’m using Thunderbird 60.8.0 (64-bit). This bug is not critical as using Owl seems to work just fine.

More precisely, here what I did:
Edit > Account Setting > Account Action > Add Mail Account
I then typed my name, mail address, and password.
Thunderbird suggested that I use Owl, but I chose the manual setting.
I entered all the information suggested here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-services/ict/self-service/connect-communicate/email/use/thunderbird/
After all these information were filled, the “Done” button was clickable, and I clicked on it.

Actual results:

All button went grey (non-clickable) except the cancel button. I waited, but no change. I clicked on “Cancel” after something like 10 minutes. The account was not added. Strangely enough, though, I saw it listed in the SMTP setting.

It thus looked to me that the IMAP part failed, but not the SMTP part. I got no error messages, which is unexpected for me.

Expected results:

I would have expected the setting window to close (instead of being greyed), and to have both the SMTP and IMAP configured, with a new account.

[Martin Constantino–Bodin (martin-bodin)]

Oh, right. I forgot that Thunderbird has its own bug reporter tool. Sorry about that.

Here is the reported bug in Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1586868

[Jorg K (jorgk)]

Typically those outlook.office365.com accounts don't have IMAP enabled, so you need to use an add-on to connect via their Exchange protocol.

In TB 60.9 we've made this more discoverable: https://www-stage.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/60.9.0/releasenotes/

[Martin Constantino–Bodin (martin-bodin)]

Thanks for the answer! Redirecting to the add-on is fine for most users, but in this case, this account is meant to have IMAP enabled (at least, that’s what the college says).

In any case, if IMAP is really not working, I would have expected some kind of error message rather than just greying all the buttons except cancel and add a “Password ok!” message in the window: as-is, it just makes me wonder what is the issue. Adding an error message like “The server does not seem to implement IMAP, please check the entered information” would be much better than what absence of feedback that Thunderbird is currently doing.

[Mkmelin+mozilla (mkmelin+mozilla)]

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+1) (PTO to 15th Dec 2019, sporadically reading bugmail) from comment #1)
> Typically those outlook.office365.com accounts don't have IMAP enabled, so you need to use an add-on to connect via their Exchange protocol.

Well IMAP is available by default. In this case (like bug 1598861) IMAP should be completely useable, per their instructions at https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-services/ict/self-service/connect-communicate/email/use/thunderbird/

[Mkmelin+mozilla (mkmelin+mozilla)]

Martin, can you try setting up an account using a nightly build? https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-central/thunderbird-73.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

Does it properly detect IMAP and select it for you now?

[Martin Constantino–Bodin (martin-bodin)]

It does! Thanks for the work! I think that we can close the bug.

[Martin Constantino–Bodin (martin-bodin)]

The bug seems now fixed: marking it as solved.

[Jorgk-bmo (jorgk-bmo)]

The fix will ship in TB 68.4. So we make this a duplicate of bug 1598861?

[Mkmelin+mozilla (mkmelin+mozilla)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1598861 ***