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Print hangs up - never prints

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February 7, 2022 - 2:47pm
#1
Rodeo6701
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Print hangs up - never prints

I've been a user of Thunderbird Portable for many years, and this is a recent problem.

My current Thunderbird Portable is Version 91.5.1 (32 bit).

Sometime a couple of months ago, after I believe there was a Thunderbird update, I began to have a problem when trying to print an email message from Thunderbird. The "Preparing Preview" screen opens, and then never proceeds at all. There is a spinning icon by the words "Preparing Preview" - and on the right side of the screen is the word "Print".

It totally fails every time - no matter which printer I am using, and I have several. The printers are all connected with ethernet connections - and all of them work perfectly with printing from other programs. It is only Thunderbird Portable that fails to print.

As a test, I removed the USB with the Thunderbird program and put it into two different computers - and in those computers the print command works normally.

My PC is a Windows 10 Pro desktop, with i7-10700 CPU at 2.90 GHz, 16 GB ram, and 64 bit operating system and processor.

I have attempted to solve this by downloading a new copy of Thunderbird Portable. But I had many problems trying to set it up correctly with four different email addresses - I suppose I could attempt to do that again - but I'm really hoping for a simpler suggestion.

Thanks for any ideas anyone might share.
Donna

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February 7, 2022 - 3:03pm
John T. Haller
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PC Specific

If it works on two other computers but not this specific one, that's likely an issue with the PC itself, possible with the printer selected in Thunderbird. First, I'd recommend closing Thunderbird Portable and exploring to the ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile folder. Copy the prefs.js file somewhere else as a backup. Then open it up in your favorite text editor. Find all the lines that start with user_pref("print and remove those. Then save the file, making sure it's encoded in the same encoding it originally was (mine is ANSI for instance). Then try opening it up again and selecting print to bring up a print preview.

If this fails, I'd recommend uninstalling and reinstalling the offending printer driver in Windows itself.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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February 18, 2022 - 1:57pm
Rodeo6701
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Print hangs up - never prints

Hi and thanks for the suggestions.
I didn't get a chance to try because I had to finish our taxes - so I was just forwarding anything I needed printed to my husband and he was printing for me (also using Thunderbird on his PC).
Then, I got an error message from Thunderbird about a week or so ago - stating my program could not be updated - and stating I would need to remove my current program and download a fresh copy from Thunderbird. I had to limp along until I finished the taxes.

Then I began to try see what might be done about Thunderbird. So I did a new download, got it set up and connected to my 3 email accounts - and then discovered none of my local folders with all my saved email are in the new 91.1.6 version. So I spent some time trying to copy the profile folder in the original version into the new 91.1.6 version - and sort of succeeded but found too many missing and mixed up files.

My address book was empty - so I exported my two Books and imported them both successfully. However - I messed up and did it twice - so how I have four Books - two are empty - and I don't find anyway to delete the two empty ones.

And finally - Thunderbird keeps occasionally failing to connect to the server - with the message" it timed out". Yet sometimes it will connect immediately. Sometimes it fails to send a message - and sometimes it does it fast. We have a professional internet service, it's very fast and reliable. All other programs work just fine and without any internet issues. My husband is also using Thunderbird on his PC, and his only issue is the intermittent failure to connect to the server issues.

I'm sort of at a stand-still while I decide if I even want to continue with Thunderbird. I dread starting over with another program - because we travel often in our RV and I can take the Thunderbird USB with me to use on my laptop, which means I have access to all my downloaded mail even when the internet is not available. I'm not sure what other options exist. PS - I will not go back to MS Office Outlook - been there - done that - not fun.

Thanks again for your attempt to help.
Donna

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February 20, 2022 - 6:57am
(Reply to #3)
Abraxian
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Try mozillaZine Forums

Donna, not to denigrate any of the advice that you got here, but I would give mozillaZine Forums a go. They have a entire section devoted to Thunderbird and some very Thunderbird-savvy folks help-out there. They might be able to make suggestions that lead you to a solution.

Hope this helps.

Use Portable Apps on both Flash Drive and HDD/SSD.

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