The situation
I have got quite a few IMAP accounts collected in my Thunderbird setup. Lately, I had to change the password on one of them, and then I wanted to fix that in Thunderbird, without having to delete the account and re-create it.
The solution
Actually, as soon as I knew what to do, it was surprisingly simple. Just finding this information was a bit confusing for me.
So, the simple solution:
- Go to Settings (Not account settings!)
- Choose the section “Privacy & Security”
- In “Passwords”, you can click on “Saved Passwords”. There, you see a list of all passwords that are stored by Thunderbird.
- Click “Show Passwords” for actually showing the contents of the passwords. You might have to confirm that you actually want to show them.
- Now you can see the passwords that are stored in clear text, and you can also edit them!
- Remember that typically, a password is saved twice: Once for the IMAP login, and once for the SMTP login.
A note of caution
Turns out, my mail server had Fail2Ban setup. I changed the password on the system and did not fast enough changed it in Thunderbird, and then I was banned from the system, as Thunderbird too often tried to connect with the (now incorrect) password.
I realize that this is expected behavior, but I did not expect it at that time and had to learn that the hard way…