Quickly Enable or Disable HTML Messages In Thunderbird

One of my security and privacy recommendations for desktop email users is to disable HTML emails. This basically turns every email that you receive into a plain text email that does not load anything from third party servers. Once in a while though you may stumble upon an email that you need or want to view in HTML. If you have disabled HTML you'd have to enable it again by going to View > Message Body As > Original HTML or Simple HTML to do that. And once you have finished reading the message, you need to perform the very same steps to disable HTML for all emails again.
Sebastian recommended the HTML Temp add-on for the Thunderbird email client to switch HTML messages in Thunderbird on or off more effortlessly.
Download HTML Temp from the official Thunderbird add-ons repository. Once it has been downloaded open up the email client and click on Tools > Add-ons to open the add-ons manager. Click on the options icon on the left of the search all add-ons form there and select Install Add-on from file from the context menu.
Select the downloaded add-on on your local computer and install it in the email program. You need to restart Thunderbird before it becomes available.
The add-on adds the current message display preference in the lower right corner of the status bar. You can now right-click on it to switch to Simple HTML or Original HTML whenever you need to view a message in HTML. Once you are done you use the same method to switch back to plain text messages.
The add-on allows you to move a button with the same functionality to one of the toolbars. This can be helpful if you have disabled the status bar in the program or prefer to click on the button in the header area of the email client.
Update: Sebastian mentioned that the toolbar button behaves different from the status bar button. When you click the toolbar button HTML will be enabled only for the active email and no other. This means that you do not have to click again to restore the plain text message view.
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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!