Thunderbird 17 released, find out what's new

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 20, 2012
Email, Thunderbird
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Thunderbird 17.0 is the last release of the email client before Mozilla's de-prioritization of the client takes effect. What this means is that Mozilla is assigning engineers that maintained various Thunderbird related positions, like feature development, code review or marketing and engagement, to other projects. The gaps are filled by contributors which worked side by side with Mozilla in some areas.

Thunderbird 17 will be an ESR, an extended support release, which means that coming versions will be released as 17.0.1, 17.0.2 and so on and not Thunderbird 18, 19 or 20. The next big version update will then be released at the end of 2013 when Thunderbird's version will be moved to 24 to fall in line with the Firefox browser.

The release notes list the following features and changes:

  • A Menu Button is now shown to new users by default
  • Tabs are now drawn in the title bar on Windows
  • An issue causing spell-checking only parts of words in Thunderbird 16 is now fixed (790475)
  • An issue causing Thunderbird 16 to repeatedly download emails is now fixed (806760)
  • RSS feeds can now be viewed in the Wide View Layout (531397)
  • Various fixes and performance improvements
  • Various security fixes
  • Mac OS X 10.5 is no longer supported

Definitely not the big bang that Thunderbird users may have hoped the last release would be. New users see the single menu button that is already known from Firefox, while Thunderbird will display the menu bar for old users by default. Tabs are now also shown in the title bar which saves some space in Thunderbird.

thunderbird 17-0

Several minor changes have not been listed in the release notes.  The Message Filters dialog comes with a search now which makes it easier to find filters in the manager especially if lots of filters are configured.

thunderbird message filter

Another change is the option to automatically display the attachment pane when you open emails in Thunderbird that contain attachments. A right-click on the attachment pane and the selection of Initially show attachment pane enables and disables the feature in the client.

thunderbird attachment pane

A right-click on a mailbox and the selection of properties displays information about the number of messages and the site of the messages on the hard drive.

email disk size

Mozilla has improved support for Google Mail addresses by implementing support for Google's XLIST, X-GM-MSGID, X-GM-THRID and X-GM-LABELS. You may also notice improvements when copying, moving or deleting messages in the client.

Existing Thunderbird users should get automatic update notifications when they start the client for the next time (if they have not already). New users can download the latest version of the email client for all supported operating systems and languages from Mozilla. (via Sören)

Existing

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

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
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    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
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      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
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      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
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      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
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    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
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    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
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    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
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    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
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    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
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    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
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    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
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      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
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    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
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    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
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    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
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    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

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