Enable Mouse Zoom In Thunderbird

Martin Brinkmann
Feb 11, 2011
Updated • Jan 10, 2015
Email, Thunderbird
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1

Users of the Thunderbird email client can zoom the text of email messages by holding down Ctrl and tapping on + to increase the font size or - to reduce it.

The zooming options are furthermore available under the View > Zoom menu in the menubar of the email client.

There is however no option to zoom in our out with the mouse which some users may find more comfortable than using the keyboard shortcut or accessing the zoom options on the menubar.

Thunderbird supports mouse zooming but it needs to be activated in the advanced configuration menu before it becomes available.

Users need to click on Tools > Options to open the general Thunderbird options. They then need to switch to the Advanced > General tab in the window to access the Config Editor of the email client.

thunderbird config editor

This opens the about:config window. The easiest way to find the correct parameter is to enter it into the filter form at the top. Enter mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action in the filter form and hit enter.

This parameter defines the mousewheel action when it is used and the Control key is active.

Only one parameter should be displayed in the listing now.

The default setting is set to scroll the document by a number of lines.

Update: the new default setting in recent versions of Thunderbird is 3 which makes text larger or smaller.

Possible values are:

  • 0 - Scroll by a number of lines
  • 1 - Scroll document by one page
  • 2 - Move back and forward in history
  • 3 - Make text larger or smaller
  • 4 - Scroll text by a number of pixels

A double-click on the parameter opens an edit form so that the value can be edited. Changing the value from 0 to 3 changes the behavior so that a combination of Ctrl and the mousewheel now zooms in or out.

Please note that there are additional parameters available that can be configured this way as well:

  • mousewheel.withnokey.action
  • mousewheel.withshiftkey.action
  • mousewheel.withmetakey.action
  • mousewheel.withaltkey.action
  • mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action

To display all of them at once filter for the parameter mousewheel.with.

The preference mousewheel.withnokey.action for instance defines the mousewheel action when it is used. It is in theory possible to switch it to zoom from scrolling if you prefer that.

The only key that has a different functionality by default is the alt key which in combination with the mousewheel scrolls the document by one page.

mousewheel thunderbird

Thunderbird users who prefer to use the Shift key instead of Control need to change the value of the mousewheel.withshiftkey.action parameter to 3 instead.

Summary
Enable Mouse Zoom In Thunderbird
Article Name
Enable Mouse Zoom In Thunderbird
Description
How to change the mouse zooming behavior in the Thunderbird email client so that it matches your requirements.
Author
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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!

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