Do you have an email signature?

Hi Matt,

No, I've never had one. This problem just arose one day, it must have been after an automatic update or something?

Please add the troubleshooting information to your post To find the Troubleshooting information:

• Open Help (or click on three-line-icon and select Help)
• Choose Troubleshooting Information
• Use the button Copy to clipboard to select all. Do not check box "Include account names"!
• Paste this in your post.

In addition please try the following Restart Thunderbird with add-ons disabled (Thunderbird Safe Mode). On the Help menu, click on "Restart with Add-ons Disabled". If Thunderbird works like normal, there is an Add-on or Theme interfering with normal operations. You will need to re-enable add-ons one at a time until you locate the offender.

Hi Matt, I appreciate your assistance with this. Under 'Help' there is an option to 'Start with add-ons disabled' so I went through that process but it made no difference. Two other bits of info may help, the 'Safe Mode' box option never used to appear but sometimes does now. Also, when opening a new screen to write an email, in the body of the email before typing there are always 2 small mid-line dashes the same as what I just put between mid & line in this typing. ( they appear together ) These mid-line dashes are about 3 or 4 lines down the page on the left margin. If I put the cursor below these dashes, the text I write will be 'preformat' but if I put the cusor above these dashes. the text will be 'body text' like it always used to be. So, something has automatically placed those 2 mid-line dashes there permanently every time a new page is opened to write an email.

Dash dash space?

"-- "?

That is a signature delimiter and message text should be placed above it.

The question is why, if you haven't defined a signature, they are being put there. So I guess that somewhere you have an aborted signature which happens to declare preformat text styling.

Oh I think there is a signature. perhaps only a single space bar, but the delimiters only appear when there is a signature.

Tools menu (alt+T) > account settings > and select the account name. make use that there is not even a blank space in the Signature text box and that the attach from file is not selected. Then restart Thunderbird.

Thank you both for helping me to understand what those delimiters are, I tried your idea Matt but to no avail. I can live with it as it's no biggie, but if either of you have any further suggestions I'd appreciate it.

Cheers, Larry.

If you send a message to me, at

xenos at gmx.co.uk

I can see if it contains any markup or signature, either of which may be causing the preformat text styling.

Something to try: place your cursor into the message text area, but before you start typing, use ctrl+<home> (hold down the ctrl key, tap the "home" key) to place the cursor right at the top of the typing space. This might get you located before any such formatting.

Hi Xenos, I sent an email to that address on the 7th, did you get it?

Yes I have it. I am puzzled because it appears to be composed as pure plain text, which has no font settings at all. Yet to see an option for preformat, you must have been using HTML. I guess that since you didn't use any markup, that it is, nothing that obliged Thunderbird to employ markup, it did what it's supposed to do and sent the message as plain text. Under these circumstances, the preformat is irrelevant, at least to the recipient. It might be useful if you were to email me again, but make at least one word bold or italic, just anything that's enough to force Thunderbird to use HTML in the message.

As Matt said, for you to be given the delimiter, you must have something that Thunderbird recognizes to be a signature. And it's also rather odd that your cursor is defaulting to a position in the signature space, rather than above/before the delimiter.

Hi Zenos,

As per your email which reads:

OK, that came through as HTML. And the part below the delimiter is indeed in a fixed-pitch text, presumably "preformat".

You mention "when using one email address and not the other two" and this suggests to me even more that in the troublesome case, there is a residual signature. You have to define a separate signature for each account, so maybe you haven't checked them all.

In Account Settings, go into each account's settings, and in its signature space, do ctrl+a to select everything (does anything change colour?) then hit delete to clear it. And check that the account settings is not referencing any external signature file. Do you have any add-ons? I can afford to be quite laissez-faire about what's in the signature boxes as I use Signature Switch to manage signatures at the point of use (which it draws in from standalone files), so this overrides anything else. You didn't try this add-on in your experimentation? Are you using any templates or the Stationery add-on? These might introduce a pre-defined signature that is easily overlooked.

So I did as you suggested, ctrl+a and there was nothing apparent or any colour change but I hit 'delete' anyway. Nothing seemed to happen so I opened up a new email page to search again for an answer and then I realised the delimiters had gone!! PROBLEM SOLVED! - Many thanks to you and also Matt for your replies and comments.

Just a note for future reference by those searching on this topic.

The HTML signature text is stored in the Config Editor . Typing htmlsigtext in the search box of the Config Editor will list each account and it's related signature text if there is something set, Note accounts are listed as id and a number for it is not user friendly in locating the correct account.

Right clicking the entry in the config editor and selecting reset from the menu will clear the entry.