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Good morning, We are a company with around 10 employees and we use Thunderbird as our email client across multiple workstations. Some of our IMAP-configured mailboxes are used on several PCs and have grown quite large, causing local storage space issues.

I recently discovered that Thunderbird offers settings to manage synchronization more efficiently — for example, by limiting the download of messages to the last X days (e.g., 30 days), or by excluding certain folders from automatic synchronization. I’m referring specifically to the options under: Account Settings > Synchronization & Storage > Advanced…, and also the Disk Space section.

I tried changing these settings on an already configured account, but the changes don’t seem to take effect — messages are still being fully synchronized. I would like to know:

   If I’m doing something wrong in the process;

   If these changes only apply when configuring a new account;

   What is the recommended way to manage large IMAP mailboxes in a business environment to reduce local storage impact and improve performance.

Unfortunately, our email provider doesn’t offer alternative solutions unless we completely change the IMAP configuration, which we would prefer to avoid.

Thank you in advance for your support — I look forward to your response.

Best regards,

I am an older user and have used Thunderbird for a long time . When switched to Yahoo I still preferred the Thunderbird layout and continued to use it . My computer became like me , to old to be useful , so I purchased a new one . When I set it up and downloaded Thunderbird it came with the Yahoo format that I find hard to use . Enough BS and to my question , how can I return to the old format ? I have a Dell computer running Windows 11 .

          Thanks for any help !  Ken

Ctrl+N (or Message/New Message) brings up a default template providing Paragraph format and Variable width. I can easily change these to my preferred Body Text and DejaVu Sans - message by message - but how can I save this setting so that the default is always set this way? The nearest I can get is to save it in the templates folder, but Ctrl+ N doesn't go there: where does it look for the template it produces?

Hello; Windows 10 & current version of Thunderbird. I am trying to add Messages Filters to filter out spam (getting more and more of that!) but the "OK" button on the add message filter is below the bottom of the screen. The window cannot be raised or resized to make the button visible. Photo below. Moving window does not allow me to raise window above top of screen. Keyboard (Alt-Enter) / Move will not work. Changed windows screen size just makes window larger but button still below bottom of screen.

Non-functional work around. Highlight Message name. Press Shift-Tab TWICE. Press ENTER. UGLY!

Tech since DOS 3.0

Thank you for your time and attention.

I moving from classic outlook to Thunderbird and I am having trouble finding how to change fonts and color in signatures for my emails. I do not do html it is a simple signature; name company name and phone numbers. I search and found no help. Is there a way to change color and font in the reply to an email? Sorry I know this sounds simple but I have been using outlook since it came out so this is similar but just enough to give me trouble. Thank you for any help, rick

I set the emails to be sorted by Threaded and in descending order by time, but I found that in the main email list, the order of the emails is correct, with the latest email at the front.

But the time order of emails classified under the same Threaded is wrong, with the earliest email always at the front.

I changed the time order in the settings, but it still doesn't work.

How can I solve this problem?

This is both a settings issue, and a privacy and security issue. I want to disable the google lens context menu item to protect my security and privacy from constant AI monitoring. I've almost accidentally clicked the new option before and I don't want to send photos or images to google's AI unless I specifically intend to do so.

I feel like Mozilla is interfering with people's privacy more and more, taking away features from their users, adding features we don't want, butting in and telling us how our browsers should work. This is starting to become absurd. Now you've added AI into the browser that can control how your tabs are displayed and named even, a setting I found while trying to disable Google Lens.

There's a couple other settings I need to figure out how to disable too, such as the context menu of translate and the ChatGPT context menu items. I just removed ChatGPT and a new AI chat bot option appeared. Just wow. What the hell Mozilla. Is your intention to just turn your browser into one big spyware?

Give me the option to disable all of this stuff you keep adding. I have a policy thats supposed to disable your auto updates too but YOU disabled that as well allowing you to install all this malware/spyware into my machine without my authorization.

I am running TB 138 and still have some issues with the layout and UI. How can I customize the spacing and font size for the "From", "To", "CC" and "Subject" fields? I much prefer the old TB interface where all these fields were much closer in terms of spacing, and the subject line font was same the size as the rest, in bold. Any way to customize this?

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

I just cannot find any information on how Thunderbird designers see the Threads / Threading features to be used. How would I use it ? What are my (individual) choices for configuration ? etc.

The only info I can find is : [how to manage and turn on/off the feature].

...and of course lots unhappy user voices across the forums.

So: How would I use it ? What are my (individual) choices for configuration ? etc. Please link the respective Mozilla resource (blog, help, user design doc, ... whatever).

Ah, to start with, a description of how the feature is meant to behave, can be a start. (Sorry, I was just too stupid to find that)

thunderbird email program does not have a "go to inbox" option. The program automatically creates tabs, and sometimes I need them. If so, it takes up to a minute to press the back button to go back all the way through them to the inbox tab. Why cannot mozilla thunderbird supply a go to inbox tab so I can go back to the inbox directly?

I don't really need to talk to a "volunteer". This is a question for whoever writes or engineers the thunderbird product. We should be able to send such questions and requests to those people who write and design this product. Does any "volunteer" know how to contact the needed personnel to redesign the product so it offers what I need?

I'm using the latest update of Thunderbird on a Windows 11 machine. This issue has been present since I started using TB sometime last year, so through various updates.

I set most of my folders, especially those used regularly (inbox, sent, trash, etc.) to unthreaded, which does sort the messages unthreaded. (Some folders I use so infrequently I haven't bothered to change them)

However, in many cases (mostly excluding the inbox), the folder reverts to threaded and I have to do it all over again.

Not the end of the world, but aggravating.

In an ideal world, I'd set ALL of my folders to unthreaded and probably leave them all there forever. (Although the option to switch on the fly does seem nice and conceivably, I might use it). Reading previous threads, I'm assuming that this needs to be done folder by folder. But what I have NOT seen is why folders which have been changed revert to threaded. I haven't figured out any pattern to it; reversions don't happen every time, so they appear to be rather random.

P.S. I have 2 email accounts and at various times, I've had to delete and re-install both of them. For one, it happens with some frequency, for the other, much less so. But I'm pretty certain that there is no correlation between the problem described and reloading the accounts. And I'm also pretty certain that it occurs from time to time in folders which store emails which are independent of either account and not online.

I went drafts to be saved in my servers 'drafts' folder and emails that I've sent going into my server's 'sent items' folder. They keep being saved in Local folders-drafts and Local folders - sent . I've tried to change that without success.

This happens about every three or four major updates: After the programmers monkey with the interface, part of my personalizations disappear. This time, it's the text menus at the top of the screen. (And it's two computers since the last time I had a solution to this.)

The "menu hamburger" is not sufficient for touch-typists. I want the icons off to the right of the text menus, on the same line, the way it's been possible to establish since Tbird was in the low-30s for version numbers. Instead, the update refused to respect my personalizations, and hid the menu bar completely and makes it impossible to combine with the icons. I dimly recall that there was an about:config solution to this in earlier versions, but can't remember or find it (or confirm it would work with Eclipse).

My emails that are in Sent or All Mail are all out out order by date - random - different dates. I don't know what happened? I expect to see the most recent first - just as i do in my inbox. It is ok. They are fine in Gmail - where they come from. Thanks

I have used Thunderbird for a long time?

A few days ago my wife clicked to open an email and the whole Thunderbird page changed so that it is now almost un-usable. I tried using the program that allows you to recover to a previous day with no luck. In frustration I saved the email file from profiles, uninstalled Thunderbird, rebooted then downloaded a new copy of the software and installed it, no luck, it opened with all my emails in the same almost un-usable configuration I can still receive email from a webmail program but it is slow and frustrating. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Bruce

Every time I want to print an email, the default copy number on my printer menu is shown as 2.

I don't know how, when or why this change [from 1 copy to 2 copies] happened.

I wish to 'reset' the default copy number to 1, so I don't accidentally print a second copy and waste ink, etc.

When I want to print documents stored on my PC, the copy number field on the printer menu is blank, allowing me to enter the number of copies I want - so the issue appears to occur only when I print emails.

Thunderbird came back looking totally different after a power outage. More like 5 of them in a 30 seconds. No matter what settings I use, it doesn't look like it used to and I do not like what I have now. It is still what I like on my laptop. When I try the export function the file is much larger than the 2 gigs. I do not understand what to do when it says to back it up yourself. I have included a screen shot on how it should look.

Hello.

I've found myself to rely on Firefox for some specific workflows that require sending emails that are generated automatically by a website, and I use it across multiple devices, such as Windows, macOS.

Unfortunately, when it comes to iOS, using the aforementioned website, when tapping the relevant "mailto" button, nothing happens.

Some months ago the specific website that I use, was failing to do this action on any webkit browser, but this was later patched by the developer and the flow now works correctly within Safari. This was caused by stricter enforcement of "user-initiated" actions.

Unfortunately it seems that Firefox isn't either capable of invoking the mail client, or get the data from the website properly.

My previous computer crashed and got a new one (Win 11 of course - new for me).

I downloaded Thunderbird. With the help of an Earthlink (my email) tech, all but one of my emails (gmail) were entered. Then I downloaded and began reading them.

The first thing I noticed was the Next and Previous buttons are missing (or placed where I don't see them).

The second thing I noticed is that when I click on one email to read, all the emails in the respective Inbox also open. This is very annoying.

I also hope someone can tell me the info I need to add a gmail account. (I rarely use it, but there two websites which require a gmail email to log on.)

And I had made a T-bird "backup" but haven't used it yet. I'd like to IF I can locate it.

P.S. Is it possible to shut off the AI "help" while writing this. I find it annoying, slows me down.