I will attempt to help. - table view and card view are two ways to show the listing of messages. Table view shows one line per message and card view shows two. That choice is irrespective of classic view or other views. Pick whichever is your preference. - pressing F8 toggles the screen that shows the content of a message. one of your screenshots shows folder list on left and table view of message list to the right and blank space below. Pressing F8 will cause selected message content to appear below the message list.

Thanks for offering help again. But I SWEAR that before I posted my message on this Forum, I had pressed F8 until I was cross-eyed and NOTHING CHANGED except the # of message headers displayed. The bottom of my large (32") moniter was blank where in Classic View the content of the highlighted message would appear.

However, after laboriously reading and responding to my Emails using what I choose to call "Stoopid View", I realized I hadn't tried closing Tbird and re-opening it again (without a full Windows restart). Lo and behold, although Stoopid View was still there when I opened Tbird up, this time F8 FINALLY was working again as you describe (screenshot attached).

I was just about to post a reply to my own message in case this solution would help others, when I saw your message in my Inbox.

But I'm still puzzled as to what caused this change in the first place. (The same way I'm puzzled as to why from time to time, Windows 11 turns off wiFi even though as best I can tell I have done nothing to indicate I want that to happen. I can manually start it up again with no problem, but it's still a baffling annoyance.)

My personal speculation is that these days so much programming effort is being wasted on AS (artificial stupidity) that there's nobody left to do the much more challenging, but less glamorous task of keeping the components that normal human beans RELY ON working properly.

Research in the 1960's pretty much proved that it's impossible to 100% debug any moderately complex program -- because the changes made to fix Bug #1 very often create Bug #2. Since current-day programs are a jillion times more complex, every change to add some "cool" new feature (many of which most users don't really need or want) tends to muck up some features that they really need. To add to the fun, 21st-century corporations have introduced barriers that prevent user reports of these problems getting through to the technical folks who could actually UNDERSTAND what the problems are and thus MIGHT actually be able to fix them.

I know you can't do anything to solve that larger problem, but typing that rant made this old lady feel much better. [g]

I really do VERY MUCH APPRECIATE your prompt and helpful advice. Thanks a bunch!!

You are very welcome, and I appreciate your comments.