Thunderbird: Unsubscribe Mailing Lists

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 7, 2009
Updated • Dec 29, 2018
Email, Thunderbird
|
3

Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists is a free extension for the Thunderbird email client that enables easier newsletter unsubscribing options.

Thunderbird day today? Not sure about that but today is the day where two interesting new add-ons have been published on the Thunderbird website.

Update: Unsubscribe from Mailing Lists has been removed by its author; it is no longer available. There is no comparable add-on available for Thunderbird at this point in time.

The first was the add-on that increased the mass mailing functionality in the web browser. The Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists add-on however enables you to unsubscribe from select newsletters comfortably.

It provides an option to unsubscribe from mailing lists from within the email client. A feature similar to the one that Gmail is offering to its users for some time now.

Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists

The process is simple. The Thunderbird add-on displays an option to unsubscribe from supported mailing lists automatically in the header of emails that are received by accounts managed in the desktop email client.

You need to click on the unsubscribe link in the header to initiate the process of unsubscribing from the mailing lists.

This will display a prompt informing you that the add-on will open a new email message which, when sent by the user, will unsubscribe the email address from the mailing list.

mailing lists

The email usually consists of the email address of the service the newsletter came from and the subject unsubscribe in the email subject with no body text at all.

The unsubscribe link is only displayed for mailing lists that use the Inxmail email marketing service which is used by global brands such as Coca Cola.

This limits the usefulness of the extension somewhat considering that companies may use other mass mailing services for their newsletters. It won't work for instance for most newsletters that include an unsubscribe link that you need to click on to unsubscribe on a website.

Tip: make sure you check the source of the newsletter or email first before you try to unsubscribe from it. Spammers may use the information, that the email account is active since they have received a reply, to fire even more spam your way.

Still, it may be useful to users who get the supported type of newsletters regularly and want a faster way of unsubscribing from them.

The add-on is compatible with Thunderbird 2 and Thunderbird 3 up to beta 3 which excludes the latest release of Thunderbird 3 beta.

The add-on can however be forced to be compatible with the Nightly Tester Tools. A download is available at the Thunderbird website over at Mozilla.

Update: Unsubscribe from Mailing List is compatible with all recent versions of Thunderbird as well. It was tested on a system running Thunderbird 31.

Summary
software image
Author Rating
1star1star1stargraygray
1 based on 7 votes
Software Name
Unsubscribe from Mailing List
Software Category
Email
Advertisement

Tutorials & Tips


Previous Post: «
Next Post: «

Comments

  1. JMGG said on January 19, 2012 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?

    1. BalaC said on January 19, 2012 at 9:42 am
      Reply

      I think its thunderbird

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
      Reply

      It is Mozilla Thunderbird.

  2. Salaam said on September 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
    Reply

    Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
    Reply

    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.

    1. Lynda said on February 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
      Reply

      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!!!!

    2. Chad said on November 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
      Reply

      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
      Reply

      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
    Reply

    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    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.

  6. garth said on November 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)

  8. Simon said on March 24, 2015 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    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

  9. Olu said on April 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm
    Reply

    Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
    Thank you

  10. Coenig said on July 23, 2015 at 7:36 am
    Reply

    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 :-)

  11. Fali said on January 20, 2016 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    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.

    1. MIki said on January 10, 2019 at 11:54 am
      Reply

      I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!

  12. Christina said on January 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm
    Reply

    Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007

  13. Oz said on July 22, 2016 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
    Reply

    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

  16. Jari said on October 31, 2016 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!

  17. Michel H said on November 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much. Solved!
    Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
    Thank you again. M

  18. Ziad Bitar said on January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am
    Reply

    This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.

    Thanks.

  19. Anonymous said on February 15, 2017 at 5:24 pm
    Reply

    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.

  20. Rochelle said on March 6, 2017 at 11:59 am
    Reply

    Thank you, this worked !!!!

  21. anom1234 said on May 20, 2018 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!

  22. JC said on October 12, 2020 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!

Leave a Reply

Check the box to consent to your data being stored in line with the guidelines set out in our privacy policy

We love comments and welcome thoughtful and civilized discussion. Rudeness and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please stay on-topic.
Please note that your comment may not appear immediately after you post it.