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Thunderbird & formatting text to send

  • 9 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 102 views
  • Last reply by eberger5

I am using Thunderbird 78.11.0 on an Ubuntu LTS 20 OS. THANK YOU for putting Open Auth 2 into Thunderbird! About six months ago, I had to resort to using a secure email key with Yahoo email products when they tightened their security protocols. I very recently got abruptly switched to OAuth2 for all my IMAP email accounts. Except Microsoft, of course - outlook mail is still in the dark ages security-wise I guess.

With Thunderbird, I want to send text with mixed formatting. Usually I use the "variable width" text as a default, and I have no problems with that. The problem arises when I want to place a fixed-width table in the middle of my text. I select the text, convert that to "fixed width" text, and it looks fine when I send it. HOWEVER, I get a bunch of escape characters showing up in the FW text, making it unreadable to most.

Samples of what I want to send and what I end up sending are attached as images. The earlier screenshot is the good-looking one; the one two minutes later is what I end up sending and I look like a fool...!

Hope you can help. /Andrew Nordquist, freetron@pacbell.net, joatphysicist@yahoo.com

I am using Thunderbird 78.11.0 on an Ubuntu LTS 20 OS. THANK YOU for putting Open Auth 2 into Thunderbird! About six months ago, I had to resort to using a secure email key with Yahoo email products when they tightened their security protocols. I very recently got abruptly switched to OAuth2 for all my IMAP email accounts. Except Microsoft, of course - outlook mail is still in the dark ages security-wise I guess. With Thunderbird, I want to send text with mixed formatting. Usually I use the "variable width" text as a default, and I have no problems with that. The problem arises when I want to place a fixed-width table in the middle of my text. I select the text, convert that to "fixed width" text, and it looks fine when I send it. HOWEVER, I get a bunch of escape characters showing up in the FW text, making it unreadable to most. Samples of what I want to send and what I end up sending are attached as images. The earlier screenshot is the good-looking one; the one two minutes later is what I end up sending and I look like a fool...! Hope you can help. /Andrew Nordquist, freetron@pacbell.net, joatphysicist@yahoo.com
Attached screenshots

Chosen solution

If you're sending through a Yahoo smtp, I think you need to force sending in 'quoted printable' format.

Edit/Preferences/General/Config. editor, double click mail.strictly_mime to true.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1260169

This affects the display of your messages to the recipient.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (9)

Chosen Solution

If you're sending through a Yahoo smtp, I think you need to force sending in 'quoted printable' format.

Edit/Preferences/General/Config. editor, double click mail.strictly_mime to true.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1260169

This affects the display of your messages to the recipient.

Thank you for the reply, but I am having trouble finding the paths you specify. I also checked question/1260169 and carefully read that and its links and cannot find the specified paths in TB 78.13 I wonder if paths have changed. I can find the following, but none give me an option to set mail.strictly.mime

I have: Tools/General/(Language & Appearance) Advanced/Text Encoding – Outgoing and Incoming mail, and I have set both to Unicode UTF-8 and I have: Tools/Composition/Send Options but this has no option for mime.

The paths that were suggested, namely: Tools/Options/Display/Formatting and Tools/Options/Advanced/General/Config. Editor

do not seem to exist in 78.13. I am probably overlooking something, and hope you can give me additional guidance.

On Linux and TB 78, the Config. editor is under Edit/Preferences/General, at the bottom of the tab. Use the search at the top of the Preferences tab.

Now I am really confused and perhaps feeling silly. I seem to recall "preferences" in prior version of TB for Win10, but in TB78 I cannot find preferences. Also under the Edit pull down there are options like cut, delete, select and find, but nothing about preferences. In my version of TB78 I have Tools/Account Settings and Tools/Options.

When I go to Tools/Options and use the search box for "config" I get Connection/Configure how TB connects to internet Offline/Configure offline settings HTML Style/Configure text format behavior and Account-specific junk mail settings can be configured in Account Settings.

When I go to the Configure text format behavior option/Send Options I get what is shown in the attached image. There are no options there for mail.strictly.mime

I appreciate your quick replies; can you guide me further?

On Windows, Tools/Options/General, or click the 3-bar icon, Options/Options. Type editor in the Options search. There is only one result, Config. editor.

I use a compuserve/aol smtp but I will give this a try and let you know what happens. Thank you much. I was only in this editor once before and had forgotten about it.

Just wanted to let you know, that after following your suggestion on setting mail.strictly_mime to true, and testing for the past month, the problem seems resolved.

Any reason why this isn't the default setting? From what I read this seems to be the "safe" option.

It's not the default because it only applies to Yahoo-based servers, and although this includes a fairly large portion of users, TB doesn't allow for per-server settings for this preference. Plus, there seems to be no effort on Yahoo's part to fix their system.

Thank you and thanx for the tip. My email is AOL/Compuserve and Comcast. The problem seemed to be occurring on the AOL/Compuserve which I guess that has been combined with Yahoo. Maybe I will eventually have to migrate away from my compuserve address as my primary email, but I have had it since the 1990s and enjoy the continuity. I'm glad TBird can make it work.