I-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.

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 Thunderbird on dark mode, so by default, unformatted text (where I haven't explicitly set text color) appears as white text on a black background in my compose window. The same unformatted text, when sent to someone viewing it in light mode, appears as black on white to them and remains readable. When I use white text in my compose window, it looks identical to me, but remains white when sent and is thus unreadable white-on-white to those using light mode. Is there something in the composition window that indicates whether I'm typing with formatted or unformatted text? (No, the color selector tool does not do this. When typing unformatted text, it displays the last selected colors, regardless of whether they are being used.)

If there's no way to distinguish this, could someone please add a UI element for it?

I want to collapse all folders in my email account.

I have a lot of them, and I don't want to close/expand them all individually. I want to quickly close all or expand all

Is there a button to do that ?