Quick Resolution : Thunderbird Incoming server already exists.

7 Comments / IT and Computers / By

“Incoming server already exists” is an occasional hiccup you get trying to configure a new email id.

Without fiddling with your inf settings, you can easily add your email account manually by adding a fake account and clicking on manually change settings.

Here is how

1. Click on Tools >> Account settings

2. Account Action ( Button at the bottom) >> add email account

3. Put here some information like

Name :aaaa@abafdll.com ( on anything rubbish)
Email : aaaa@abafdll.com
Password : kaflsdjklsfdjl

4. Click on Continue

5.  Wait till it says thunderbird failed to find settings for your email account

6. Click on Manual Setup

7. Now you will see in your account list that the new account is created already. Fill it up with your correct server information.

That’s it. What you just did was created a fake profile and edited it later.

7 thoughts on “Quick Resolution : Thunderbird Incoming server already exists.”

    1. Kimberly Shivler

      Thank you so much for this post! This happened to me for the first time today and I was really getting frustrated until I found your post. It worked and my new email account is working fine.

  3. Mark

    Thanks Akash – what a clever and simple solution. The developers of Thunderbird are, unfortunately, not so clever. They have designed an inflexible and flawed system that requires workarounds like yours, when they had no need to.

  4. Tina

    Darn it. I realize this is an older post, but I was hoping this would solve my issue… but it didn’t. I’m trying to configure Thunderbird to work with a Gmail account and when I try to add the account in Thunderbird I continue to get the “Incoming Server Already Exists” error message when I try to complete the set-up.

    So frustrating.

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