The menu option you're looking for is View > Headers > Normal

Thank you Stans

  I guess I should poke around a bit more.  So simple when you know.  :-)

Robert

Yes, poking around is a good way of getting familiar with the program. You'll master it in no time. You're welcome.

Even setting headers to normal, there's still too much stuff. I installed a new desktop yesterday, so I had to download Thunderbird and Firefox. Now all email messages appear with separate lines for From, Subject, Reply to, and To. I know who it's to (nobody sends my dog email), I can tell from the listing of all emails who it's from and who to reply to, as well as the subject. I know Thunderbird did not display all this stuff on the old desktop. As the OP points out, this stuff eats up a lot of real estate. Is it possible to get rid of some of it? Thanks!

You could turn off the Message Pane (reading pane) by pressing F8, then double-click a message to open it in a tab. This is how I use Thunderbird. If you would rather keep using the Message Pane, try the Vertical View layout which is under the View > Layout menu. By customizing how many columns are visible in the Threads Pane (list of messages) and resizing it so that it doesn't take unnecessary horizontal space, you can maximize how much space the reading pane has. None of these alternative views reduce the size of the header in the opened message, but they maximize vertical space usage when reading the message, which makes the header's "'too much information'" immaterial.

If you must have a smaller header regardless of the layout you use, then you can use an add-on such as Compact Headers to alter what gets displayed in the header. Note that add-ons are voluntarily written by third-party independent developers during their free time and they are solely responsible for making them compatible with Thunderbird. Add-ons are a common cause of unexpected behaviour in Thunderbird, so IF you must use them, be aware of the possibility of the add-on not keeping up with Thunderbird's development roadmap which could render it unusable in future releases of Tbird.

Stan

   Thank you for your answer.  I did not know about turning it off using F8.
 I will have a look at 'Vertical View' settings and see how they work.  I 

attempted to use the addon Compact Headers and it appears to be unavailable for my version of TB which is 52.2.1 on my older machines. I will however give

it a try on TB 68 that I have on a laptop with F32.

   I will mark this problem as solved and thanks again for the help.

Robert I also sent this reply to the email response. I am just getting used to this forum.

There is another add-on named CompactHeader that has a version compatible with Tbird 52+

Also, when asking for help here, always indicate the version of Thunderbird for which you need help with.

Thank you, Stans, for your reply. The other ways of formatting the panes don't really appeal to me and CompactHeader is made for Thunderbird 68.0 and older. Currently, there are no plans to update this for newer versions, so I guess I'm out of luck there and will just have to learn to live with it. l appreciate your help!

Thank you, Stans, for your reply. The other ways of formatting the panes don't really appeal to me and CompactHeader is made for Thunderbird 68.0 and older. Currently, there are no plans to update this for newer versions, so I guess I'm out of luck there and will just have to learn to live with it. l appreciate your help!

CompactHeader and Compact Headers are two different add-ons, although they perform the same function. Compact Headers works with v68.

If TB is going to insist on using 10% of my screen for generally useless header info, which mostly just duplicates what's in the panes above it, there should be a way to toggle TB to suppress/show headers.

Of course CompactHeaders was the perfect compromise solution until TB killed it.

I am curious why designers thought the header info was useful even. On my screen it shows:

From: which is listed in the pane above anyhow Subject: Listed above Reply to: which I really don't care about - and if I need it, it automatically shows up if I hit "Reply" To: It's been received into my account and I don't already know it's to me? If I want to see more names, they're available under Reply All or I could turn on the headers if there were a toggle.

Then there are the icons:

Reply - which is already on the toolbar Forward - already on the toolbar Archive - don't know what that's useful for, but if I right click on the message it pops up anyhow Junk - already on the toolbar Delete - Already have a delete key, don't need an icon

I couldn't agree more, wjm263!

I hate being forced to endure the space-wasting default layout. Many thanks to those responsible for killing CompactHeaders and the other add-ons and themes I used to be allowed to enjoy. I hope you're happy now that TB is all monochrome with lots of wasted space.

The "view/headers/normal" helps a bit, but I want more room in the reader panel and as discussed above the header info is largely duplicated. The "Compact Headers" add-on that is offered for TB 78 may be a way to shrink the header pane, but it asks for permission to access my entire computer. Is that root access? Is this add-on really able to do anything? I'm leery of apps that want complete access. The number of downloads for this add-on is much smaller than for the other add-on that worked with TB 68 and earlier. Anybody have experience with the new one?

The "Compact Headers" add-on did the job for me ! Thx.

It seems that there was a change with an update about two months ago, maybe in September or October of 2020, that made changes to the header in the preview pane. Before I was able to make the header as large or small as I wanted. After the update, there was no way to adjust it. I don't understand why something that was not broken, got "fixed". Dear TB, please put it back the way it was before, so I can control how much header there is and read more of the message without having to open it up. Turning off preview pane is not a solution. Please just go back to the way is was before. Or is there another option that is not mentioned in this thread? Thanks for your service! Brad

So how can I get the preview pane header to minimize?

The latest update has removed the - box top left of headers in the viewing pane, so they can't be shrunk to 1 line any more. I would like it back.

How do I compact the header in Thunderbird 'v. 78.5.0'? I have selected 'normal' in 'view'. The headers were compacted until I installed a recent upgrade to Thunderbird. Thanks!

My wife and I both have Thunderbird 78.5.1 on our laptops. However, she has an extra option located under View/Headers. She can chose All or Normal or Hide Headers. I only have All or Normal. How do I find the Hide Headers option?