Gmail Conversation View For Thunderbird
Thunderbird Conversations, formerly Gmail Conversation View, adds a message grouping option to the Thunderbird email client.
The email client Thunderbird displays email conversations on a single page. The visual hint the program uses to distinguish between different messages is a vertical line that is colored.
Those lines can take up quite a bit of screen estate if the conversation went back and forth several times already.
We recently covered the Collapse Quotes add-on for Thunderbird which provides a better overview by collapsing all but the first line of each message.
But the default display mode has another issue. It is difficult to quickly switch between messages of a conversation.
Thunderbird Conversations
Thunderbird Conversations offers solutions for both issues that Thunderbird users may face when they are using the email client.
The add-on ports the way Google displays conversations on its Gmail service to the Thunderbird email client.
Each individual email is drawn with a border so that you can distinguish them on first glance. The colored vertical lines are not needed in this view mode at all because of it.
Update: Installation has been improved. All you need to do is to install the extension in Thunderbird. It will apply the new format to all messages right away.
It is also no longer necessary to customize the menu anymore. The extension adds button to the email header right away that you can click on to perform operations such as collapsing all messages or toggling their read status. Update end
Installation of the add-on is unfortunately complicated. This can be attributed to the early experimental stage of the add-on above anything else. Gmail Conversation View requires the installation of either the Compact Header or the Customize Header Toolbar add-on.
Another step that is necessary (after installation of two of the add-ons) is the manual customization of the header toolbar in Thunderbird. This is done by right-clicking the email header and selecting customize. It is now important to drag and drop the button of the add-on - which is called View Full conversation - to the other buttons that are displayed in the email header.
A click on that new button will from now on change the view of that email from the standard Thunderbird view to the Gmail view. Those changes are temporary for now and gone as soon as the user moves away from that email conversation.
The developer has plans to extend the functionality. One interesting option would be to enable the Gmail conversation view mode permanently for all email conversations. Gmail Conversation View is compatible with Thunderbird 31 and newer. The latest version of the add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.
The add-on improves how conversations are displayed in Thunderbird. While it brings Gmail's way of displaying conversations to Thunderbird, it is not limited to Google Mail but compatible with all email accounts that you manage using the email client.
Other notable features that the add-on adds are auto-collapsed quotes to save space, and keyboard shortcuts.
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!