How to Manually Update Mozilla Thunderbird in Windows

When a newer version of the popular email client Mozilla Thunderbird is released, it gets updated automatically in usual cases. But sometimes the software installation gets botched up and does not allow you to update Thunderbird for some inexplicable reason. In these cases, you have to take matters into your own hands and manually update Thunderbird yourself. While it may look like a herculean task in the beginning, after reading this article you will realize that it can be done very easily.

Here is how you can manually update Mozilla Thunderbird in Windows:

1. First of all you have to close all the open instances of Thunderbird email client. To do so, open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc hotkey, select Thunderbird from the list and click on End Task button.
2. Visit the Thunderbird download web page and download the Thunderbird for your system and language. Save the downloaded file somewhere on your hard disk.
3. Download and install 7-Zip archiver in Windows. Then right-click on the Thunderbird package you downloaded in previous step and choose Extract to “Thunderbird Setup 38.0.1\”. Of course, the version number could be different.
4. Now you will have all the Thunderbird files inside the core sub-folder where you extracted the Thunderbird package. Select all these files by pressing Ctrl+A inside the core sub-folder and press Ctrl+C to copy them.
5. Open the Thunderbird installation folder (usually C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird or C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird) and then press Ctrl+V to paste all the files here.
6. You may have to give administrator permissions to overwrite the older files with newer ones. Once the copying is done, you have newer version of Thunderbird. You can now launch Thunderbird from its usual shortcut.

Conclusion: If Thunderbird’s regular setup program is throwing up some strange errors, then you can manually update the popular email client yourself. The whole process takes less than one minute and gives you updated version of Thunderbird without fail.