Hmm you can! Was there something specific about that copy and paste you wanted to ask about.

I have just created a new message, added a table, and selected it. When I right click on it I see a menu with the Cut and Copy options greyed out If I press Control-C, and then Control-V in a new part of the message, nothing happens. On these grounds I think Thunderbird does not support the copying and pasting of tables, but if you know a way to do it I will be grateful if you would let me know.

My apologies. If I select a cell in a table, right-click, and choose the Select All item in the pop up menu I can then copy and paste the whole table. Slightly weird operability but it works. Strangely, the border colour is not copied across.

My apologies. If I select a cell in a table, right-click, and choose the Select All item in the pop up menu I can then copy and paste the whole table. Slightly weird operability but it works. Strangely, the border colour is not copied across.

I went to the trouble of looking at tables copied from Excel at one point as most of the formatting did not arrive in Thunderbird. I though that was a poor showing of what you see is what you get. What I found was Excel only put the basic table and data on the clipboard as HTML it put everything on the clipboard in RTF. Thunderbird defaults to picking plain text or HTML. I would not put it past Thunderbird to also leave out the styling. Personally I do not use grids in emails unless I am desperate as they generally present particularly poorly on phone screens. Lots and lots of left and right scrolling as the screen is so much smaller that the desktop.

Matt, I have very little use for tables as such in email messages. I do have three email recipients who use crappy email clients that don't show HTML quotations properly. When I'm sending quotations to these people I put them in single-cell tables with nice borders, that way everyone is happy. Instead of setting up a table from scratch for each quotation I want to keep a table in my templates folder and just paste it into the emails I'm writing. I set the table border colour in Thunderbird with HTML, so the bird's lack of facility with RTF shouldn't be an issue.

I wrote that if I simply selected a table I could not cut or copy it. However, if I right-click in a table and choose Select All I could copy the table to the clipboard. This is correct and it works if there is nothing in the message apart from the table. If there is also text in the message then clicking Select All selects the entire document, and I am not able to cut or copy the table by itself. Maybe Thunderbird could be modified so that, if a table is selected without its context, it can be cut or copied.

Hi,Alan37 To avoid fiddling with HTML code every time, Thunderbird offers two elegant ways to tame these tables for your picky recipients: Method: Using Drafts as Templates The simplest method, which doesn't require installing any extensions: Create a new message. Insert your table and adjust the borders and colors using the Table - Table Properties menu. Save the message as a draft (Ctrl+S). When you need to send a quote: go to the Drafts folder, right-click the message, and select "Edit as New." The original "template" will remain intact. Built-in Templates Form an email with a blank table. Select File -> Save As -> Template. The email will be saved in the Templates folder. Now, double-clicking it will open a new window with the completed table. Quick Inserts (Quicktext) If you often quote fragments as you write, the Quicktext extension is your best bet: Install Quicktext. Create a new template in the extension settings.

Now you can insert this table anywhere in the email with a single click or a hotkey.

Miran.H, Thanks for your post. When I want to quote I'm usually replying to an existing message (The source of the quote) so starting from a template with just a table in it doesn't help. Also I often need more than one quote so working from a template with a single table in it doesn't cut the mustard. I've found your suggestion about Quicktext very interesting and I downloaded it. Unfortunately when I try to instal it I see “Quicktext could not be installed because it is not compatible with thunderbird 147.0.1”. If you know a workaround I'd love to hear it, Alan.