Change the way Thunderbird handles quotes
Thunderbird changed the way quotes are handled in the email client recently. If you have been using a different email program before you may have come to the conclusion that the way Thunderbird is handling quotes is quite irritating.
Take a look at the screenshots below and you know what I mean. The first shows the general way most email programs handle quotes. The second shows the way Thunderbird handles quotes by default.
The difference is that Thunderbird indents each quote in away that it may become difficult to follow as the text is no longer vertically aligned in the email.
The Thunderbird add-on Quote Colors changes the way Thunderbird handles quotes. You can change the way back to the default way quotes are handled or change it into one of the options shown on the screenshots below.
So, if you do not like the way Thunderbird handles how quotes are displayed you can change it easily by installing the Quote Colors add-on for the email client.
To display text vertically aligned, enable the collapse borders option in the preferences. You can still modify how quotes are displayed, for instance by changing colors for different quote levels, changing border width and style, or use custom message colors.
Update: Please note that you need to modify a config file of the extension if you want to install it on a Thunderbird version newer than version 3.x. Here is what you need to do:
- Download the Thunderbird extension from the Mozilla Add-ons store.
- Use a program such as 7-Zip to extract the xpi file.
- Open the folder and use Notepad or another plain text editor to open the install.rdf file.
- Locate the line <em:maxVersion> and replace the version there with 30.0 so that the new line looks like this <em:maxVersion>30.0.*</em:maxVersion>.
- Now select all files of the unpacked archive, and create a new zip file from all of them using 7-Zip again.
- Rename the file extension from .zip to .xpi.
- Load the extension in Thunderbird and it should install just fine.
Update: The Quote Colors add-on has not been updated since 2009, and as a consequence, it is no longer compatible with the most recent versions of the email client. While there are some advanced configuration options available in Thunderbird, none change the general display of message quotes in the browser.
A Thunderbird add-on that you may be interested in is Nested Quote Remover. While it does not get rid of the way Thunderbird handles quotes, it removes unnecessary nested quotes from the email client to improve the accessibility of conversations in the program.
The extension has not been updated since 2011, but seems to still be compatible with the latest versions of the email client. You can download the latest version of the add-on from the official Mozilla website.
You may find the following two extensions useful as well. Quote Collapse provides you with the means to collapse and expand quotes which may go a long way into improving their accessibility in the program. Quote Highlight on the other hand takes care of quote formats that are not recognized by Thunderbird as quotes by default.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!