i ran in to this issue as well i never use an addon unless i like something, i reset mine up in the orders i chose cause i have 13 email accounts a few at gmail, outlook,live, yahoo, aol. so i did gmail last as its more active, but also remember program reads backward so if you add a gmail then aol next. aol will be first in order and remain first. unless you change orders of how you want them to read from i ran in to this recently on my linux. i wish i could offer a solution i never run in to the issues as I set up things how servers or programs read. how ever the only solution i can offered is that of what i just expressed on this one.

Thanks for your help, but I have far too many email accounts and an alphabetical order and / or whether from the top down or from the bottom up, does not help me keep track. I manage a lot of email accounts ... But thanks anyway for your answer.

You can manually edit the prefs file, but I honestly cannot recommend this course of action. It's too dangerous and likely to break your Thunderbird.

Install the add-on, use it, and remove (or disable) it afterwards.

Look at it this way; how often does the average user add or remove an account and therefore need to re-jig the order of accounts? Why permanently burden Thunderbird with a function that is only occasionally used?

Drag-and-drop would be nice, but that's even more bloat than an add-on.

Yes you are right. Most users have only one or maybe two email addresses, but this should not be a reason to include such two basic functions (change the order of the accounts, specify folders and delete them if necessary). Apart from that, I strongly believe that at least in Europe, many more will switch to Thunderbird, which also have several accounts, since TB Enigmail makes setting up PGP a lot easier than Outlook. And thanks to the (stupid) DSGVO, PGP encryption is an issue that can not go unnoticed anymore ...

I have 11 or so accounts. On the rare occasion I want to delete or add one one, or re-order them, I re-enable the add-on, use it then dis-enable it.

Thunderbird is all about add-ons. You get a basic, lean client and tweak it by using add-ons. Each of us gets close to exactly what we want, with no or very little surplus baggage. For instance, personally I have no use for the "chat" feature. I'd much prefer this to be optional, via an add-on.

If you don't like add-ons, or this philosopy, then sure, find a client that does what you want.

I for one don't want some of the wierd and cranky things that other users seem to think are essential.

This is exactly the attitude with which the progress is slowed down. "It's the way it is and that's good ..."

Every now and then you should also think outside the box, so that an existing, albeit well-functioning technology can be further developed.

I also solved the problem with the add-on, but it does not change that this "solution", ie the add-on on 6 computers, has to install, apply and deactivate / uninstall - or the profile of transfer one computer to all others and replace the existing one ... It would all be much easier if there are not such attitudes as "It's the way it is and that's good ..." - that's exactly the attitude of many in the Linux community, which even upset Linus Torvalds. ,

Well no matter! I do not shy away from work and accordingly I implement the solution of my problem via this detour. But since this is not really an acceptable solution, I will not set this thread / problem to be solved - maybe a TB developer takes this problem to heart and brings out a solution.