Thunderbird Community Forum

Very little to do with accounts, but none of the selectable topics cover 'user Interface'.

Used to be able to open different accounts in different windows. Can't remember how, but it was obvious. Once new window is created, each time Thunderbird is started it re-creates them. I accidentally closed one and can find no way to re-open it. I use three email accounts each needing a different mindset, so keeping them in different windows helps. Also one has a screendepth full of folders and so is easier to handle in its own window. (The others are still there but only take up one line each when collapsed.

140.7.1esr (64-bit) Mozilla Thunderbird Snap for Ubuntu ubuntu-snap-build - 1.0

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 recently upgraded to version 115.10.1 and it is driving me utterly insane. It repeatedly turns on threading. I turn it off for a folder, next time I log in it's on again. I turn it off in a folder and copy that setting to all other folders, but it turns itself on again. Others say turn it off in Settings/Appearance. But I don't seem to have Settings/Appearance.

How do I stop this? Or is there a way to find out what version I was originally running and go back to that. I hadn't upgraded for a good while but my old version was much better. This one is also really slow and I hate the tiny text.

On upgrade to 152.0, a pop-up asked for options I have not seen before. I cannot find info about what the net.thunderbird option is, nor why I would or would not want to click it? Any help out there?

Thanks!

How do I add the thunderbird email app into my firefox links area? I can load gmail into it but I can not find the www stream to use to get to thunderbird.

Thanks.

Thunderbird Calendar cannot select custom sound for reminder. The browse button to select custom sound does not work.

Same issue was brought up by someone else 3 years ago here: https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/1414126

The provided solution which worked for the user (on TB 102):

Settings/General, Config. editor, paste mail.biff.play_sound.url in the search, then click the Reset icon for that preference, then see if the Browse button works.

This no longer works on TB 152.01, so cant use longer duration custom sound. The default sound is a micro-second blip that is easy to miss.

Hope to find solution. Thanks!

I use Thunderbird to access my Gmail accounts. Gmail is confirgured for IMAP and I am able to access all of my E-mail accounts ... so that is good.

However, I do have one issue: When I delete an E-mail in Thunderbird, it moves to the TRASH folder and I empty that daily. However, when I go to Gmail, I can see that they are STILL in "All Mail". If I access All Mail in Thunderbird and delete messages, they reappear.

The only way I am able to get rid of them for good is to access them in Gmail. If I don;t, the All MAil folders grow like crazy and messages thgat I deleted are still there .. some were several years old.

Question: Is there a way to set up Thunderbird so that when an E-mail is deleted in Thunderbird, that it takes it out of "All Mail"?

HI all

I've just bought a new 24" iMac desktop and it's running Tahoe 26.5.1. I'm using Thunderbird 152.0.1

Everything migrated fine from the old machine, but on the old machine a great many of my subfolders under Local Folders were disordered. Now, I've used 'reset folder order' to fix them, but within those subfolders, the next level of subfolders are disordered. Manually dragging and dropping makes it worse (didn't know it could get worse, but it has...) and when I took advice and looked for the 'Manually order folders' add-on, it says it's not compatible with my version so now I'm stuck. I have ongoing conversations with several hundred clients and cannot work if I cannot file and search email alphabetically, it's a disaster. I'd send a screenshot but the client names are confidential. Can anyone please help??? The top line of subfolders under Local Folders are fine, it's the folders within those subfolders that aren't. Thanks in advance!

In Thunderbird, when reading an eMail, if the Junk or Delete button is clicked on, that eMail gets marked as Junk or Deleted. For either of those selections, the next message immediately gets automatically opened without someone clicking for that to happen.

Our Suggestion is to change the Junk and Delete button features so that only marking an eMail as Junk and deleting it happens, without automatically opening the next eMail. Also, when deleting an open eMail, change it so that deleting it is all that happens, without automatically opening the next eMail after deleting one.

My Message Source displays text in very large Liberation Mono. I can't find a setting anywhere, including Advanced Preferences. Where can I change that?

Liberation Mono is the font I have set for monospace in different languages. Since it is not the default, there may be a connection there.

Also, since yesterday when I reply to certain HTML messages, the font used for quoted text is again large size Liberation Mono. I haven't changed anything, so I suspect it's a bug in new 152.0.1.

When I replaced Outlook with Thunderbird, it was brilliant. It was so good, I chose to donate! Now it's changed. I was trying to find out why a forwarded email changed the body of the message to a HTML attachment. I stupidly followed a wrong AI help process and changed something I can't remember. Now all of my emails only show hyperlinks and not the pictures these hyperlinks point to. I would like the pictures back and the option to download these if these are safe in new emails. I've seached everywhere I thought I went but I can't find the setting that does this. Please help if you can.

I don't use Archives or Templates. There is no folder on my servers that correspond to these and they are not subscribed in my IMAP settings.

They don't appear in the per-account view. But they somehow appear in the unified folder view.

I am not able to figure out how to make them disappear.

Help.

I have loaded thunderbird and the email preview pane is not displaying. It was OK this morning but has disappeared now. Is this a temp[orary issue or has there been an update of the program.

I'm working with Thunderbird 152.0 on linux (Manjaro GNOME). I've been having this issue where sometimes while composing a reply, the quoted text of the email I'm replying to in the body of my current reply will be displayed as black on the dark background. It's very annoying when I need to look at specific text to refer to in my message.

Some more observations: - This is not a new issue, it's been happening for quite a while now, possibly years, but it's finally gotten to a point where I want to fix it. - It does not always happen. I suspect it's when the original message I'm replying to has been formatted in html first, whereas I prefer plain text replies.

I've attached an image of what it can look like on my end, as well as one where I select the text to show the contents.

Is there anything that can be done about it?

Thunderbird is marking unread messages as read after about 5 minutes. I've tried changing settings by delaying or unticking automatically mark messages as read in the "reading & display area" and it's still marking messages after about 5 minutes to read when they haven't been opened. We are not using Bitdefender - I saw this was referred to in the help section and changes could be made to that to stop this happening but we are only using Microsoft defender. We are not using another device, ie phone or ipad to access emails on this account - just a PC We do have other email accounts running on different PC and none of those appear affected by this problem.

Whenever I open the single mail with the arrow > , it opens up as well all the past mails and sometimes mails which are not related with my topic. Please let me know how I can fix it avoiding the mail grouping. Many thanks in advance for your help. Kind rgds. FT

Whenever I restart Thunderbird, I have to change the settings back to "Table view," 20 recent folders, sorted alphabetically. This occurs on only one of my computers (Windows 11). My guess is that the settings file must be corrupted. How do I fix that?