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I save read messages in Local Folders but I want them to open like a new message NOT in edit mode, asking if I want to send it after re-reading -- can I?!

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  • Last reply by RBlanc

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The question about says it all except, by way of explanation, I know that I can right click a stored message and choose to open it in a tab or window the way I want, but this is easy to forget and irritating in any case since in other email clients I have always clicked on stored messages once and they open in read mode with the option to reply or forward if I want to get into an editable mode. Notice that even if a message is unread (e.g. mailing-list messages I want to get back to later but store properly now) as long as it is stored in Local Folders, it still will open in edit mode. So marking everything unread won't work. Very inconvenient and I cannot understand why anyone would would prefer this. Seems like there should be an option to have all messages open in read-only mode, but I haven't found it.

The question about says it all except, by way of explanation, I know that I can right click a stored message and choose to open it in a tab or window the way I want, but this is easy to forget and irritating in any case since in other email clients I have always clicked on stored messages once and they open in read mode with the option to reply or forward if I want to get into an editable mode. Notice that even if a message is unread (e.g. mailing-list messages I want to get back to later but store properly now) as long as it is stored in Local Folders, it still will open in edit mode. So marking everything unread won't work. Very inconvenient and I cannot understand why anyone would would prefer this. Seems like there should be an option to have all messages open in read-only mode, but I haven't found it.

Chosen solution

re:the icon by 'More Local Folders" isn't a monitor image like the top "Local Folders" one, or a yellow one, but instead looks like the dog-eared white page icon used for the "Drafts" folder.

I can change any folder in 'Local Folders' to have a dog-eared white page icon used for the "Drafts" folder if I select that folder as a place to store drafts for any other mail account.

Please check all other mail accounts.

  • Right click on a mail account in Folder Pane and select 'Settings'
  • select 'Copies & Folders'
  • Check to see if any 'Keep draft messages in:' has selected 'More Local Folders' instead of the proper 'Drafts' folder for the account.
  • Check all mail accounts and edit as required then click on 'OK'


Do you have any pop mail account set up as a Global Inbox account which uses 'Local Folders' as 'Inbox' ?

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What you're describing is abnormal. In mine, if I select any existing message, it opens for reading, and I'd have to explicitly use Reply, Forward or Edit As New to get it to open for editing.

Others have reported your issue, but I don't recall the cure. I'll have to do some research.

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Thank you Zenos.

The only thing I can add that may be relevant is that most of the 49,000 or so emails in my Local Folders were imported twice -- first when on my previous computer I switched from Windows Live -- or whatever MS was then calling their email client -- to Thunderbird and second when I migrated my Thunderbird files from my old Windows 7 Home Premium computer to my current Windows 7 Professional computer.

My memory may be faulty, but I think that when I did the migration from Windows Live Thunderbird placed all my imported folders under a single sub-directory under Local Folders, it also named Local folders. What I do remember is that when I migrated to the new computer and imported my old Thunderbird files, Thunderbird placed that old "Local Folders" top directory under the new "Local Folders" top directory. So I think I then had an arrangement that looked like this: Local Folders/Local Folders/Local Folders/..(sub-folders).

I didn't like that arrangement at all, particularly since I'm not unfamiliar with the awful "path-length-too-long" problems you can get when copying and backing-up directories. So I took a chance and selected all the sub-folders and moved them under the next highest "Local Folders" directory as they had been on my previous computer. Sad to say, they were not moved as a block, as they might have been in an HD file system, but apparently, each folder and file was copied one-by one to its new position, and it took a frightening length of time.

Needless to say, I would be leery of trying that again, though conceivably Thunderbird is seeing the second "Local Folders" directory (which I renamed "More Local Folders") as somehow a kind of "Drafts" folder, which would account for (1) Why all files below it open in edit mode, and (2) Why the icon by 'More Local Folders" isn't a monitor image like the top "Local Folders" one, or a yellow one, but instead looks like the dog-eared white page icon used for the "Drafts" folder.

If I collapse "More Local Folders" all I have under the top "Local Folders" directory with the monitor icon are: "More Local Folders", "Trash", and "Outbox". So I just did a test: emails left in the "Trash" folder open properly in read mode not edit mode. And I just created a "Test Folder" under the top "Local Folders" -- yellow icon of course -- and an email I dragged there also opens properly in read and not edit mode.

Well, needless to say, it looks like all my local folders are sitting in sub-folders under a "Drafts" directory. I still have a normal Drafts directory, so I don't see how I could have commandeered it for my local folders, but that's what it looks like. If one who is more expert than I concurs, please suggest the solution. Should I just select all my local folders under "More Local Folders" and try to drop them on top of the top "Local Folders" -- or is there a safer way to move my 49,000 emails?

Or could I be misdiagnosing my problem? Thanks for the help.

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Chosen Solution

re:the icon by 'More Local Folders" isn't a monitor image like the top "Local Folders" one, or a yellow one, but instead looks like the dog-eared white page icon used for the "Drafts" folder.

I can change any folder in 'Local Folders' to have a dog-eared white page icon used for the "Drafts" folder if I select that folder as a place to store drafts for any other mail account.

Please check all other mail accounts.

  • Right click on a mail account in Folder Pane and select 'Settings'
  • select 'Copies & Folders'
  • Check to see if any 'Keep draft messages in:' has selected 'More Local Folders' instead of the proper 'Drafts' folder for the account.
  • Check all mail accounts and edit as required then click on 'OK'


Do you have any pop mail account set up as a Global Inbox account which uses 'Local Folders' as 'Inbox' ?

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Access: 'Account Settings' select 'Local Folder' mail account Post image showing all options that display under 'Local Folders'. eg: 'Junk Settings', Disc space' etc

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Okay, Toad-Hall, very helpful to learn that any folder selected under an email account setting for "Copies & Folders" and "Keep draft messages in" becomes a Drafts folder with that Icon.

I went through the 5 email accounts I have on Thunderbird and found that at least one pointed to "Drafts on Local Folders". Now I had no "Drafts" folder directly under "Local Folders" but I did have a created "!Drafts" that my account(s) pointed to under its sub-folder "More Local Folders". In any case I went through all of the accounts and pointed all of them to a newly created "My Drafts" folder directly under "Local Folders" and, yes, its icon changed to the dog-eared white page. I did the same for all the "Sent Items" -- placing all of them in a "My Sent Items" directly under "Local Folders" and its icon changed to the light-blue square in a white frame.

I then moved all files out of the original "Local Folders/More Local Folders/!Drafts" to the new "My Drafts" folder so I had an unused folder I could delete, which I did, and similarly for my now unused "!Sent Items" folder. This did not result in "More Local Folders" changing to a normal yellow folder, but I realized this was a good time to move all the folders under "More Local Folders" to positions directly under "Local folders" which I did, not all at once but folder by folder, to avoid that scary wait that makes it seem like the thing has quit. (Maybe Thunderbird should have progress bars for file moving, as infrequent as that may be.)

When I was done moving folders, and after closing and reopening Thunderbird, I still had an empty "More Local Folders" with a "Drafts" icon that I couldn't delete directly, but I discovered the "Open directory where is the folder file" item under the right-click menu item "ImportExport Tools". That allowed me to look at the file underlying "More Local Folders" and see that it had a few MB of contents which I looked at with an editor and discovered the remains of two emails, probably corrupted. So I Just deleted that corrupt file and my "More Local Folders" 'Drafts-style' folder went away, leaving me with a clean "Local Folders" containing all my subject-related sub-folders the way I want them.

Many thanks Zenos and Toad-Hall for teaching me enough about what's under the hood in Thunderbird to solve my problem: Yes, all my stored files now open in read and not in edit mode!