fonts won't stay
I just downloaded Thunderbird 24.5.0 three days ago and have spent the past three days researching forums, help topics, etc and cannot find a fix to fonts that won't stay put. On both my outgoing and incoming message the fonts default to something incredibly small, probably size 8. My old eyes just can't read this small size. I need a font which is size 12 (probably Times New Roman) and that will be the default for what messages I compose and for what messages I read. Any advice is greatly appreciated as this issue is a deal breaker and I truly want to keep Thunderbird. Thanks!
Chosen solution
I think you may have two separate issues.
First, for incoming messages, go back to that page where Sander G mentions the "allow messages to use other fonts" setting and also set up the font sizes YOU want, especially the minimum size. The gotcha is that different fonts can be specified for different encoding schemes, so at the top where it mentions an encoding type, you need to select each encoding that is relevant to you and set the font sizes for each one. You probably need to look at Western and Unicode at the minimum. Note that the font sizes are in pixels, not the more customary points, so the numbers you are familiar with in other environments won't make much sense here. I think you'll need sizes 16 and upwards.
More here: http://www.ramsden.org.uk/9_Type_sizes.html
The second issue is that when composing, apart from some oddities within Thunderbird itself, it's easy to move past an invisible font setting tag. There are various things you can do to reduce the likelihood of this happening.
Have a look at this thread: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/997215?esab=a&s=&r=8&as=s
As mentioned there, and if typefaces aren't important to you, and you don't need to set a specific font for table/column layout reasons, then using plain text in your own messages may help you.
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If you go to Display, Formatting, Fonts & Colors and click Advanced, did you uncheck 'Allow messages to use other fonts'? If not, your preferences might be overridden by the messages themselves.
Sander G, yes, that block is unchecked. Thanks for your response.
Chosen Solution
I think you may have two separate issues.
First, for incoming messages, go back to that page where Sander G mentions the "allow messages to use other fonts" setting and also set up the font sizes YOU want, especially the minimum size. The gotcha is that different fonts can be specified for different encoding schemes, so at the top where it mentions an encoding type, you need to select each encoding that is relevant to you and set the font sizes for each one. You probably need to look at Western and Unicode at the minimum. Note that the font sizes are in pixels, not the more customary points, so the numbers you are familiar with in other environments won't make much sense here. I think you'll need sizes 16 and upwards.
More here: http://www.ramsden.org.uk/9_Type_sizes.html
The second issue is that when composing, apart from some oddities within Thunderbird itself, it's easy to move past an invisible font setting tag. There are various things you can do to reduce the likelihood of this happening.
Have a look at this thread: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/997215?esab=a&s=&r=8&as=s
As mentioned there, and if typefaces aren't important to you, and you don't need to set a specific font for table/column layout reasons, then using plain text in your own messages may help you.
Thank you, Zenos, your solutions worked, appreciate it!