Productivity Tip for Thunderbird

Drag and Drop is probably the more comfortable way to move emails around but keyboard shortcuts can speed up the process tremendously. That is what Nostalgy, a Mozilla Thunderbird add-on, is all about. It adds keyboard shortcuts to move and copy messages, change folders and display the folder pane.

The most useful keyboard shortcuts in my opinion are the first four which all open a line at the bottom of Thunderbird that accepts folder names. It displays folder suggestions once you begin typing a name much like Google Suggests work when you search the web.

It is possible to select a suggestion for quicker access instead of writing the full name. You can also press enter once a single suggestion is displayed in Thunderbird. The shortcut l seems to be useful as well because it hides the folder pane which means that mails can be viewed using the full width of the window.

• [G] Open a specific folder
• [S] Move the current message to a specific folder
• [B] Move the current message to a specific folder and go there
• [C] Copy the current message to a specific folder
• [L] Hide/show the folder pane
• [ESC-F] Focus the folder pane
• [ESC-M] Focus the message pane
• [ESC-ESC] Focus the thread pane
• [ESC-ESC-ESC] Focus the thread pane, clear quick search box, select the “All” view
• [ESC-I] Focus the quick search box (same as Ctrl-K)
• [Ctrl-Left/Right] Scroll the message from the thread pane

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday December 9, 2007 -
Tags:Email, thunderbird add-ons