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Sort folders manually the folder plane

  • 14 replies
  • 4 have this problem
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  • Last reply by olap1

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Hi There, Is there a way to sort the folders in the folder plane on Thunderbird 78? I am used to sorting my mail into many different folders for each project and being able to reorder the folders manually is really important. Previously I could use an Addon but this is now disabled in 78! At the moment the folders are listed in alphabetical order with no option to reorganise them.

Any ideas on how to do this would be very much appreciated.

Cheers!

Hi There, Is there a way to sort the folders in the folder plane on Thunderbird 78? I am used to sorting my mail into many different folders for each project and being able to reorder the folders manually is really important. Previously I could use an Addon but this is now disabled in 78! At the moment the folders are listed in alphabetical order with no option to reorganise them. Any ideas on how to do this would be very much appreciated. Cheers!

Chosen solution

Not without using an add-on. There is no such inbuilt facility that I know of. Your best bet is to revert to v68.12.0 and stick to it or engage the author of the add-on to see what their plan is for v78 support.

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Chosen Solution

Not without using an add-on. There is no such inbuilt facility that I know of. Your best bet is to revert to v68.12.0 and stick to it or engage the author of the add-on to see what their plan is for v78 support.

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Well, I tried to revert and got a message about the new version made changes to the profile that are not compatible with the reverted version and I would have to start a new profile and add all the accounts. So I re-reverted to 78.2.2 (32 bit).

So, somewhere I saw that TB sorts alphabetically so I tried to rename the accounts by preceding the account name I wanted to be first with the letter "A", the second with "B", etc. That didn't help. They are staying in the old order.

As an aside, I upgraded to 78.2.2 today on two computers. Both Windows 8.1. The Desktop says the add-on Manually sort folders is installed and running. In fact I can turn it off and on. But, sadly there is no "Tools, Manually sort tables".

On my tablet it says Manually sort folders is disabled because it is not compatible.

At this location:[ https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/manually-sort-folders/] it says the version supports TB 68.0 - 73.0. But installing it on the tablet didn't help.

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I don't get it. I spent 20 minutes typing in this window about what I tried and experienced and posted the reply but nothing shows up. It says the last reply was by me 24 seconds ago but it isn't here.

[EDIT] Well, it did show up later but this post (7:27:33 PM) was there a long time before my previous post at 7:21.

Modified by petejc

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petejc said

Well, I tried to revert and got a message about the new version made changes to the profile that are not compatible with the reverted version and I would have to start a new profile and add all the accounts. So I re-reverted to 78.2.2 (32 bit). At this location:[ https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/manually-sort-folders/] it says the version supports TB 68.0 - 73.0. But installing it on the tablet didn't help.

To open your v78 profile in v68, you need to use the --allow-downgrade commandline switch to override the profile downgrade protection feature that was introduced in v68. Revert to v68, then go to Start > Run and type:

thunderbird.exe -p --allow-downgrade

Press Enter, choose the v78 profile and launch Tbird. The add-on should function as expected. It is not compatible with v78.

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Why would Thunderbird offer users of earlier upgrades to Thunderbird to upgrade to 78.2.2 when 78.2.2 does not allow use of folder sorting? And manually sort folders does not work.

Like buying a new car and getting a last century dashboard.

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j said

Why would Thunderbird offer users of earlier upgrades to Thunderbird to upgrade to 78.2.2 when 78.2.2 does not allow use of folder sorting? And manually sort folders does not work. Like buying a new car and getting a last century dashboard.

You don't have to upgrade though, do you? You have the choice to not upgrade.

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I might not upgrade if I had known but my natural instinct is to trust Mozilla to "do no evil". Or at least warn us that after this upgrade the following will no longer be functional...............

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There is a simple but time consuming way to sort email folders. Not sub folders just email accounts with their sub folders. I use 3 email accounts with Thunderbird each with same provider. A couple of days ago I deleted one account to reset it and then reinstalled it. Problem was it went to third on bottom of other two folders. I wanted it to be first on list with its sub folders. That is how i found this Get Help Forum which I did not find. So What I did was delete other 2 email folders, logged out of Thunderbird, logged back in and installed other two in alphabetic order. And now I have what I wanted on top and other two under. I hope this helps someone but it would have been nice to have an add-on application updated to 78.2.2 Enjoy

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petejc said

I might not upgrade if I had known but my natural instinct is to trust Mozilla to "do no evil". Or at least warn us that after this upgrade the following will no longer be functional...............

My final words on this and recommendations FOR YOU are as follows:

  • Disable automatic updates in Thunderbird
  • Backup your profile folder regularly
  • Read the release notes of every release before you apply an update/upgrade to see if there are any "deal breaker" changes in the new release.
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Well, maybe I missed something but I went through the release notes for 78.2.2 and couldn't find any reference to add-ons that will no longer work after upgrading. Sorry.

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j said

There is a simple but time consuming way to sort email folders. Not sub folders just email accounts with their sub folders. I use 3 email accounts with Thunderbird each with same provider. A couple of days ago I deleted one account to reset it and then reinstalled it. Problem was it went to third on bottom of other two folders. I wanted it to be first on list with its sub folders. That is how i found this Get Help Forum which I did not find. So What I did was delete other 2 email folders, logged out of Thunderbird, logged back in and installed other two in alphabetic order. And now I have what I wanted on top and other two under. I hope this helps someone but it would have been nice to have an add-on application updated to 78.2.2 Enjoy

j, Thanks. I may have to resort to that but I have 15 or 16 accounts. And I may have "lost" password information for some of them. And at least 2 are with cable companies that have been bought out multiple times. Believe it or not when someone sends a message to those old accounts, whoever holds the account now will honor my TB Get Messages. But I can no longer access or log into those accounts to arrange some kind of forwarding. And try as much as I can to get a few "oldies" to update their address book, my old accounts seem to come back like zombies.

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I received below yesterday. Could below be a spam email wanting me to click on highlighted links? Reason I ask, what I suggested as way to sort folders was not all that difficult. If below was a bit more personal other than to my email address I would printed it out and put it in a picture frame above my desk. Thanks

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j said

I received below yesterday. Could below be a spam email wanting me to click on highlighted links?

Not spam. You can check the actual address of the links without opening them. Right-click > copy link location then paste it in notepad or anywhere else you want. You'll see they link to this domain.

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Work around - rename your folders with a number prefix - thus dog renamed to 2dog will become your second folder in the list - this will obviously mess up your filters which will have to be redone - if you want to reorder more than 10 folders then use a double digit prefix (02dog) otherwise 11 will follow one. Not elegant but workable :)

p