Most of my tool buttons are greyed-out rendering them unusable, how do I enable them?
Recently I have been getting floods of spam mail. After looking up solutions I am trying to mark all mail as spam or not spam. I used to be able to do this using the buttons on the tool bar at the top, but now some are greyed out, like the junk button - so unusable. I don't think I have altered any settings that would cause this problem, so what can I do to make the buttons turn black and enabled?
I would really appreciate any advice as this spam onslaught is really upsetting and time consuming. Because the spam is on my server, my iPad and iPhone receives them as well, multiplying the deletion sessions I have to do.
Thanks in advance for any help
Chosen solution
You say they are greyed out, but have you tried using your buttons? They look to me just as the default theme presents them.
For instance, your "Forwards" button is greyed out. The others look OK.
If you want more colour then try some themes. I like xpDefault since it restores most of the colours and brings Thunderbird more into line with the rest of my computer's UI.
I'm puzzling over what button you think you have lost. I don't think I've ever seen Junk and Not Junk buttons in Thunderbird by default. Junk status can be set and unset by use of right-click and Mark, or by using j and J keys on the keyboard (but I can never remember which does what) and there is of course the Junk column in the Thread Pane. This lets you set a positive Junk status, but leaves me uneasy that it doesn't provide a means to mark messages positively as Not Junk, whereas JunQuilla does.
I do have Junk and Not Junk buttons in my Toolbar but I put them there by use of the JunQuilla add-on.
Note that Junk and Spam are two different things. Thunderbird refers to unwanted messages as Junk. When you see the word "spam", if you do, then it has come from somewhere else, usually your email provider or ISP, or maybe your own anti-virus or security software.
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Hello,
In order to better assist you with your issue please provide us with a screenshot. If you need help to create a screenshot, please see How do I create a screenshot of my problem?
Once you've done this, attach the saved screenshot file to your forum post by clicking the Browse... button below the Post your reply box. This will help us to visualize the problem.
Thank you!
Hello! I have the screen shot..........but try as I might I can't get it into this box because I do not appear to have a clipboard. Is the uploaded image below the needed file? I hope this enables you to help with my problem, if not get back to me and I will try some other things! Thanks again, Chris
Chosen Solution
You say they are greyed out, but have you tried using your buttons? They look to me just as the default theme presents them.
For instance, your "Forwards" button is greyed out. The others look OK.
If you want more colour then try some themes. I like xpDefault since it restores most of the colours and brings Thunderbird more into line with the rest of my computer's UI.
I'm puzzling over what button you think you have lost. I don't think I've ever seen Junk and Not Junk buttons in Thunderbird by default. Junk status can be set and unset by use of right-click and Mark, or by using j and J keys on the keyboard (but I can never remember which does what) and there is of course the Junk column in the Thread Pane. This lets you set a positive Junk status, but leaves me uneasy that it doesn't provide a means to mark messages positively as Not Junk, whereas JunQuilla does.
I do have Junk and Not Junk buttons in my Toolbar but I put them there by use of the JunQuilla add-on.
Note that Junk and Spam are two different things. Thunderbird refers to unwanted messages as Junk. When you see the word "spam", if you do, then it has come from somewhere else, usually your email provider or ISP, or maybe your own anti-virus or security software.
Modified by Zenos
Hi, Thanks for your reply. This is really strange. The buttons ARE black now, and working! I assure you that yesterday several were all greyed out like the forward arrow is now!
After posting my question I looked up more information and made some adjustments to my settings in Mozilla. I also added JunQuilla add on.
By the time I got Matt's reply about the screenshot and fiddled about doing that, I wasn't noticing the actual screen or whether the buttons were black again. In the past when I have designated a mail as junk by pressing the junk button, an orange junk symbol appeared at the side of that mail.
Whatever, - it seems that the adjustments are now filtering out the mails marked as junk into the junk box where I am able to delete them all at once and that is so much better.
Now I have to find an iPad forum, to find out if there is a way to stop the junk finding it's way on to iPad and phone! Even with a mailwasher app on, the junk keeps transferring.
I am not always a confident user of technology, so thanks, Matt/Zenos for your help and clarification of terminology.
Modified by wildflowers47