Thunderbird Community Forum

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.

We're planning to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird, but we have a hard time in harmonizing font sizes on text and signature. One of the issues is that fonts can be set to textual values tiny, small, medium, etc. w/o knowing what it corresponds to in pt. But lets explain what we tried so far: - Under Settings/ General / Language&Fonts, we defined Calibri 12 as default, what we repeated under Advanced for 'Latin' & 'Other Writing Fonts' - Under Settings / Composition, we defined Calibri / Medium for the HTML Style - The HTML-signature is defined using the Calibri 12 font But when creating a new message w/ these settings, the result is terrible as you can see in the example: disregard the fonts' color, just look at the font sizes.

Is there any simple solution?

All my read emails are showing on the top bar of my thunderbird. I have to scroll left past multipee tabs to get to my inbox. This just started recently and at the same time email replies started showing up under the original. can I turn these features off.

Currently using TB 153.0, Win 11 on desktop PC.

In past versions there was a progress bar on right end of the status line, along bottom edge of the screen, that showed progress while TB was compacting folders. That bar hasn't been visible in last few updates.

When prompted today, I allowed TB to start compacting. I'd permanently deleted a really big bunch of old emails in last few days, so probably a lot of space that could be recovered. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting, but without the progress I had no idea if TB was busy or possibly frozen. So I just left it alone. When I came back and tried to manually start compacting, it immediately said "Done, 0K saved". So it had obviously done the compacting.

If it's an option, how do I enable that progress bar? If not currently available, please consider restoring it in future TB updates. I -for one- think it's a very useful feature.

THX!

Hello,

I followed the steps to use the vCard option as a Email Signature.

When creating a new email the vCard Signature is not appearing.

Please Advise,

Rodney

I want to send an email to an address book list. I've searched for how to do it, and a "Write" button is needed but I do not have one. I tried right c,licking on the upper bar and chose customise. I see various buttons to add including "Write", but nothing I do adds it.

When I open something in an email in Thunderbird I also get an extra new tab along with the tab for what I am wanting. If I don't delete this new tab, when I try to return to my email page it takes me to my Windows 11 home page. It only happens when I use Thunderbird and is very annoying. What do I need to do to resolve this issue.

I was a satisfied user of the Thunderbird e-mail client. I especially enjoyed the ability to toggle into darkmode when browsing and reading my e-mail. The previous toggle I used to activate that feature is missing, and I cannot locate a work around to turn it back on. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Until recently, Folder Panes were visible at all times, but after the most recent update, they only appear when I am on a folder and are not visible when I am on a message. I have activated Views/Folders/Folder Pane Header, but that does not solve the problem.

Shortly after my most recent update, my Sent folder became corrupted. Rather than containing recently sent messages, it contained older messages from another folder, and when I send a new message now, it is not added to the Sent folder. When I tried to send a message, I received an error notification indicating that the message could not be archived because the folder did not have enough memory. I deleted everything from the Sent folder and then compressed it, but that did not solve the issue. I then closed Thunderbird, manually deleted the Sent folder from Mail/Local Folders; the Sent file was regenerated when I started the program again but with the same issue. I then backed up my profile, removed Thunderbird and reinstalled it, and then copied my profile over without the Sent folder. But when I opened the program, the issue still persisted.

The folder properties for the Sent folder indicates:

Name: Sent Location: mailbox://nobody@Local Folders/Out -- 148 November-Dec 2022

The location is obviously incorrect as it does not point to the Sent folder, but rather to another folder I use to store older message. I see no way to change the location, and the Repair Folder option does not solve the issue.

I would be very grateful for any suggestions.

I have lost the send, attach buttons on my new emails? not sure what I touched.

I can recieve emails and reply but when I want to write a new email I am not able to send it as the button to send is gone.

also the New Message button is gone.

I went to View and tool bars... Composition was already enabled. Alt and F10 did not reveal "Send." I tried to use the "Customize" menu and it did not include "Send." I do appreciate your help, even if everything suggested so far has not worked. My fear is that I may have to delete my Thunderbird in its entirety and re-install. If I do this, is there a way for me to save my address book? Is there still a way for me to get my Send back.

I may have to just settle using <Ctl> Enter on my keyboard. Bill

Most of my buttons have disappeared except the send button, which doesn't work. Online help is confusing or doesn't fix the problem. I'm ready to move to a different platform. Why is this so difficult?

I tried the Toolbar fixes in this forum and got the menu to show up, thank you. (Any menu in Compose mode had disappeared. Actually, both Firefox and Thunderbird icons on desktop and Taskbar had disappeared as well, and I had to reinstate shortcuts. This may or may not be pertinent.)

But when I try to add "Send" to the menu, using customize, the "Send" icon is nowhere to be found as an option, so I cannot add it to the Toolbar in Composition mode. "Send" is grayed out in all bold textmenus. If I use Ctrl-Enter, message does get sent. Using Windows 10, still. Perhaps this is an upgrade issue?

Have searched a dozen time for how to enable Development Tools

From the menu, select Developer Tools. An incoming connection prompt will appear.

Important! To allow the developer tools to connect to Thunderbird, you must approve the connection in the prompt. The prompt window may be hidden behind other Thunderbird windows.

So I gather it may not be connecting as there is no prompt.

Ideas if there are any would be appreciated.

AND

I can't edit the first post of a new query, is that the default ??

Sometimes an email I receive contains text whose right margin and text is chopped off. I thought this was because the emails were formatted for Google's gmail, but I just received an email from Thunderbird itself that is truncated this way. What's going on?

I'm enclosing a screen shot. I can also send the .eml file if that's helpful.

I need a filter on a message to FULLY FINISH before a next message starts to be filtered. The "help" (quotes because it's an abyssal crap) says that simply ending the filter with Stop Filter Execution does it - but that's simply NOT TRUE: calling a console program in the filter, I can see five DOS boxes opening at the same time with five messages matching, i.e. the filters on the next message DID NOT wait! So... what can I do??

All of the above is because I'm getting "Too many simultaneous connections on the server". I'd like to limit the concurrency, but it only seems to be possible in IMAP, while this connection is a POP. Why only IMAP??!