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How to change view column widths to fixed size

Thunderbird Customization
fred.d1 replied
fred.d1
fred.d1

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.

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.

All Replies (2)

Matt
Matt
  • Top 25 Contributor

Is this Thunderbird from a tarball, a snap or flatpak? They come with different restrictions just as downloading the install for windows come with different restriction to the one from the Microsoft store.

The settings do not stay set when; They go back immediately, after Thunderbird is restarted or after a reboot of the computer?

fred.d1
fred.d1 Mai mallakar tambaya

This is from the Mint repository (I think it's Mint specifically not Ubuntu, but that's only from a couple of things I read long ago) text from the help dialogue shows:

140.11.0esr (64-bit) Release notes Thunderbird for Linux Mintmint-001 - 1.0

The last bit of which would suggest a specific build.

I always assumed that specific builds were due to system hooks/interfaces and that the user interface would be consistent across OS platforms (at least as much as screen size and hardware would allow). From what you say that's not the case?

In terms of the specific issue, I assume that the list pane of the window has been constructed as a table with a fixed width that's set/adjusted to the width of the pane and the columns within are set to adjust automatically within that table. At least that's what it looks like. It's just is there a way to control the column behaviour or do I need to change?

Yi tambaya

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