Connecting to Thunderbird email server

Hello George,
Thank you for contacting AVG community support.
We understand thatyou are unable to send email from Mozilla Thunderbird .
We are really sorry to know this. We'll certainly check and help you out.
We would request you enable Internet connection sharing mode in the AVG firewall and check if the issue is resolved.
Open AVG Internet Security, click Menu -> Settings -> Basic Protection -> Enhanced Firewall. On the right-hand side, enable the Internet connection sharing mode.
Also when connected to AVG Secure VPN, you may experience problems while trying to send emails from an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Apple Mail (Mac). This article contains instructions to solve such issues : | AVG (https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlname=troubleshoot-avg-secure-vpn-email)
Thank you.

I have been AVG Internet Security for a number of years without a problem.  Yesterday I tried to send an email from Mozilla Thunderbird and received the following error: "The message could not be sent because the connection to the outgoing server (SMTP) timed out."  I contacted my ISP, Spectrum, and they determined that this error is not on their end but a problem with AVG blocking access to the mail server.  This appears to coincide with the update to AVG that was installed in the past several days. Someone please help.

Hello George,
Thank you for contacting AVG community support.
We understand thatyou are unable to send email from Mozilla Thunderbird .
We are really sorry to know this. We'll certainly check and help you out.
We would request you enable Internet connection sharing mode in the AVG firewall and check if the issue is resolved.
Open AVG Internet Security, click Menu -> Settings -> Basic Protection -> Enhanced Firewall. On the right-hand side, enable the Internet connection sharing mode.
Also when connected to AVG Secure VPN, you may experience problems while trying to send emails from an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Apple Mail (Mac). This article contains instructions to solve such issues : | AVG (https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlname=troubleshoot-avg-secure-vpn-email)
Thank you.