Thunderbird Community Forum

I had tbird set up just how I liked it on my laptop. Then the laptop screen hinge broke and I had to replace it. Have installed tbird on new machine but cannot find the setting I need. I want the message preview pane to be on the bottom instead of on the right side of screen. I also need to know how to import my contacts from the old machine.

Jeg bruger Thunderbird på PC. Jeg er erfaren bruger af Thunderbird. Jeg har et spørgsmål som ikke kan passes ind i nogen af de foreslåede kategorier.

Thunderbird er begyndt at åbne enhver e-mail jeg klikker på som et pop op vindue. Dette er usædvanligt for mig, og jeg ønsker det ikke. Der findes jo allerede en velegnet rude til visning af en e-mail inde i programmet(thunderbird).

Hvordan skifter jeg tilbage til den visning(åbning af e-mail) jeg har været vant til?

Hvordan sørger jeg for at de ændringer jeg har foretaget under thundrebird instillinger bliver gemt og effektueret?

I want to collapse all folders in my email account.

I have a lot of them, and I don't want to close/expand them all individually. I want to quickly close all or expand all

Is there a button to do that ?

Subject: Persistent Column and Folder Layout Issues — Not Being Saved Between Sessions

This is a follow-up to my previous support requests regarding two ongoing problems that significantly impact daily usability.

Column Settings I manage multiple accounts, and my preferred column layout is: Starred, Read Status, Attachment, Subject, From, and Date/Time. I do not use Threads, Correspondents, or Spam Status columns. Despite setting these preferences repeatedly, Thunderbird fails to retain them. Every day I must spend time reconfiguring columns across some or all of my accounts — the state varies unpredictably from one session to the next. This is a persistent, daily frustration that costs meaningful time. Most other major email clients save and reliably maintain column preferences. I'd expect Thunderbird to do the same.

Folder Panel Layout Two problems occur regularly when Thunderbird loads:

Folder order — Standard system folders (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, All Mail, Trash, Spam) should appear at the top of each account. Instead, Sent, All Mail, Trash, and/or Spam are frequently scattered among custom folders, with no apparent consistency.

Folder expansion — Most or all folders load in an expanded state, exposing every nested sub-folder regardless of whether they contain unread mail. This creates unnecessary visual clutter and requires manual collapsing each session.

Again, this behavior is uncommon in other widely-used email clients. Summary These are not one-time glitches — they recur daily and represent a significant usability gap. I'd appreciate confirmation that these are known issues being tracked, or guidance on a reliable fix. Reformatting the interface every morning is not a reasonable expectation for users.

i manage 8 email accounts for different projects I run.

When I open thunderbird, all my folders in each email open up. Is there not a setting to say don't open folders?

Hallo, ich habe vorgestern ein neues Win11 aufgesetzt und dann die neueste Version von Thunderbird installiert. Mir ist jetzt aufgefallen das sich die E-Mails nur mit einem Doppelklick öffnen lassen und das dafür ein neues Fenster aufgeht. Früher waren die Mails mit einem Klick zu öffnen und der Inhalt wurde auch direkt unter der Mail angezeigt . In den Einstellung steht der Doppelklick nicht in der Auswahl sondern als einzige Möglichkeit. Gibt es da irgendeine Möglichkeit um das anders einzustellen, einfacher Klick und direktes anzeigen ohne extra Fenster? MfG

Hello, the day before yesterday I set up a new Win11 and then installed the latest version of Thunderbird. I have now noticed that emails can only be opened with a double click and that this opens a new window. Previously, emails could be opened with a single click and the content was also displayed directly below the email. In the settings, double click is not in the selection but is the only option. Is there any way to set it differently, single click and direct display without an extra window? Best regards

I use Thunderbird on dark mode, so by default, unformatted text (where I haven't explicitly set text color) appears as white text on a black background in my compose window. The same unformatted text, when sent to someone viewing it in light mode, appears as black on white to them and remains readable. When I use white text in my compose window, it looks identical to me, but remains white when sent and is thus unreadable white-on-white to those using light mode. Is there something in the composition window that indicates whether I'm typing with formatted or unformatted text? (No, the color selector tool does not do this. When typing unformatted text, it displays the last selected colors, regardless of whether they are being used.)

If there's no way to distinguish this, could someone please add a UI element for it?

I use vertical view. Hate threading so that's turned off. I use a medium to large message pane. Recently been having issues with column visibility. Not sure if this is new or whether it's that I've come to a Linux client from a Windows one and there's a setting I missed when I set up the client.

Essentially dragging the column divider doesn't work properly (for me). The columns always seem to auto adjust width. Similarly if I resize the message pane the columns don't remain fixed they auto adjust.

I don't find this helpful. I prefer to set up the columns to display the amount I want/need in subject and From and I truncate the date to simply not display time.

How do I set column widths to remain where I put them? Or is this function now lost.

Thunderbird aggregates in the same threads e-mails from my employer that are completely unrelated. They are sent in different months, with a different subject, etc. and they end up in the same thread. Clearly, there is something in the header pushing Thunderbird to aggregate them, but this results in a very annoying ordering of the emails.

In my case, e-mail messages are sorted on date with descending order. However, the first message I see in my list dates back to months ago because another message sent few days ago has been merged with the previous one in a thread.

This would not be a problem if the message displayed in the list were the last one added to the thread and not the first one starting the thread.

I have done several searches and read several help pages and discussions here, but I cannot find a way to display threads in the same way the rest of the messages is shown, i.e. latest first. For some obscure reasons, Thunderbird keeps displaying in the message list and in the threaded view (when I expand the thread), the messages in reverse order wrt my selection.

How can I fix this?

Recently...large windows of received emails are showing up in the lower right side...and I have to delete or dismiss. Is there a way to minimize that option and not require me to respond? Formerly it would open as a small alert...and not requiring a response. Just went away, as I recall!!

Hello,

I have this problem. On only 1 PC from 5, with same mailboxes installed and same configurations, on one of the mailboxes, Thunderbird does not accept setting to "not read" the letter. I tried making time to read the letter and it worked for 10 min, and then again stopped. At final, no matter how it is set, when I push to read the message it always read it.

Tried repairing the folder, but doesn't work.

Any Ideas will be great.

Thank you

Greetings, Is there a way to change the order of threads in a folder? The all appear with the oldest message in the thread at the top and new emails that come into that bunch are buried at the bottom with no indication that they are there. I'd like to have the newest entry to the thread at the top and to have the threads with new messages highlighted until the message is read. Possible? Many Thanks

I am using Kubuntu 26.04 and I am using the monthly stable channel version of the Thunderbird Snap. In KDE system settings, the default email client is set to Thunderbird. Upon every startup of Thunderbird, it ask if I want to set it as the default client for email, newsgroups, feeds and calendar and when I click yes and close Thunderbird and reopen it it does the same thing, over and over. Otherwise the email program operates just fine otherwise. My email accounts are all setup properly and functioning and working and it downloads email just fine. It just has that annoying popup upon every startup. I've included two images to show what I mean. I like the Snap version and prefer that container format. I would like someone who is smarter than me to file a bug on my behalf.

How can I ensure that messages are always saved locally, along with images?

The IMAP protocol works fine now! How can I ensure that images in emails are always saved locally when the internet is disconnected?

How can I avoid constant requests to image hosts when I reopen an email?

Hi,

I've just updated my Thunderbird for Windows to 151 and I got this nasty surprise (this is why I hate updates these days).

The message list in dark mode, in a table view, now has this awful pitch black background instead of the normal dark brown as it used to have. It looks OK in cards mode, but I don't like cards mode.

I certainly hope this is a bug and not by design. Can this be fixed, please? It looks terrible, it's hard to look at, like old Windows 10 dark mode or some high contrast accessibility mode.

Thank you!