There might be times when you have lost or forgotten the Master Password of Mozilla Thunderbird. Just like this happened with me when I upgraded my email client to latest version Thunderbird 3. After upgrading the client started asking me for Master Password which I didn’t remember, I tried some of my common password but it didn’t work so I searched for solution for it.
There are two ways you can reset or change your master password :-
If you remember your password your previous Thunderbird 3 password you can change by going to
“Tools -> Options -> Security -> Change Master Password “.
Second is if you have lost or forgotten your password even then you can reset it but Do take a note that by doing so all the saved Email Account passwords, personal certificates and private keys shall also be deleted.
For resetting lost or forgotten password in Thunderbird 3 Choose Tools – Error Console, paste the expression:
openDialog(“chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul”)
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a good post and very impressive. I need it. Thank you.
Awesome man.. Thanks a lot. The second method saved me the day. i had forgot my pwd and was stuck. I had a dozen email accounts to be re-configured and it would have been a pain, without your master pwd reset snippet. Thanks once again.
Welcome to Softpoint.in. I am glad that the posts on my blog has helped you out.
openDialog(“chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul”) doesn’t work with the german version. You have to change ” in “. After this, it works.
Thanks for the tip as i use only English version was not aware of this.
openDialog(‘chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul’) this works for me.
Changed the double quotes by single quotes.
I’m not using the English version too.
Thanks for the tip.
Thanks mate, was searching for this since last 2 days. Ur post was really helpful. Thanks
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Thanks Manpreet…that was a good tip!..really helped
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I have called technical support and he gave me this link. I never set a Master password I always hit cancel so cannot change my password as I didn’t have one. I have tried what you have suggested open Dialog (“chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul”) BUT I cannot click evaluate as it does not work. Please help. Thanks, Linda
Try this expression in error console openDialog(“chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul”) I have tried it on latest version of Thunderbird it’s working perfectly. Also make sure that you are using the latest stable version not the beta version of Email client.
It did not work for me until I re-typed the quote marks in the console myself. Must be a font issue?
Yes, you are right it’s a font issue. Glad that your problem is solved
It worked for me! Thanks!
I am glad that the posted trick worked for you.
I did it, clicked Evaluate, but it does not work…:(
I have English version 3.0.4
it shows:
Error: illegal character
Source File: javascript:%20openDialog(%E2%80%9Cchrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul%E2%80%9D)
Line: 1, Column: 12
Source Code:
openDialog(“chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul”)
Just re-type the quote marks in the console. This should solve the problem
openDialog(“chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul”)
Tried all the above but all I am getting is:
potentially vulnerable to CVE-2009-3555
Any ideas would be gratefully received
John Patterson
To get it to work you must use ‘single quotes’ for English version as well. Of interest to others, I never used a master password in the prev. version of TBird. This is some kind of programming glitch in version 3 Thunderbird.
The expression:
openDialog(“chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul”)
does not work. Turn off “smart quotes” in your editor.
Looking at my comment, it appears the “smart quotes” are on for this entire page/site. Maybe modify the text to use the " (") expression ?