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Don’t jump to next message in Thunderbird automatically

The problem that Thunderbird is always selecting the next message in line after deleting or moving the previous one has bothered me for some time. It happened more than once that a spam mail was selected and read that way which I did not want to happen obviously.

Unselect Message puts an end to this. Instead of moving to the next message in line when deleting or moving a message it simply does not select a new message. This makes sure that Thunderbird does not jump to a spam or malicious message after deleting or moving the previous one.

Unselect Message is unfortunately not compatible with the latest version of Thunderbird unless you change that. It seems that the author is not developing the extension anymore but it is working fine in the latest version of Thunderbird.

Download the Thunderbird add-on from the Mozilla website. Rename the xpi extension to zip and unpack it. Now edit the file install.rdf with a text editor and change the maxVersion entry from 1.6 to 2.1. Save the file and move it into the archive once again replacing the old version of it.

Now install the Thunderbird add-on as usual and the extension should work just fine.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.

Author: , Monday January 7, 2008 -
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Responses so far:

  1. Wizard of Oz says:

    Using a program like MailWasher eliminates this problem altogether, since you can delete unwanted emails directly from the mail server before downloading the email that you do want to see.

  2. Calm Dog says:

    MailWasher is essential. But still there are times when you don’t want to open the next email in line. The simplest way I’ve found to avoid this is to just CLOSE the email and then hit the delete key. That deletes the current email and leaves you in position to open the next – if you want to.

  3. There must be a way. The problem occurs most often when I have a lot of messages and I am in a hurry. That is when I find myself inadvertantly opening mail I would rather delete or skip for later.

    I am using the Eudora/penelope version of Thunderbird.

    Any suggestions?

  4. Magnus says:

    Great! Thanks!!! I was about to give up Thunderbird because of this annoying feature. Your tip works perfectly.

  5. Thank you very much, that was so useful. That ‘feature’ was driving me up the wall.

  6. Stefan says:

    Thunderbird does not need an extension for that to be changed, there’s a configurable for it: have a look at http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/tips , you will find the guideline to change it under ‘Change the Advance to Next Unread Message behavior’

    • Stefan says:

      The tip mentioned before applies to unread messages only :-(
      A modified version of the add-on mentioned in the original acticle can be found at http://forum.addonsmirror.net/index.php?s=dcde7e23d9f47a1236859008f3a6c7f5&showtopic=7228
      Look for the “download”-Link below the “Bumped Version:” header

  7. VirtualGuy says:

    Do you know of a new fix for this issue in the latest version of Tbird????

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