How to change the font of mails in Thunderbird
Thunderbird is my desktop email client of choice and one of the reasons for that is that it is highly customizable. Not only by installing extensions that change the client's behavior, but also by making changes to settings that the program ships with. I was recently asked if there is a way to increase the font size of the Ghacks newsletter in Thunderbird, and sure thing, there are several options to do so locally.
There are two ways to change the font size of emails in Thunderbird, one is only making the changes temporarily for the session while the other one is permanently making the change.
The easiest way to change the font size is to hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and use the mouse wheel to increase or decrease it. The changes are visible right away in the mail pane so that you can use this method to adjust the font size to a level you are comfortable with. You can alternatively use Ctrl and the minus or plus keys on the keyboard, or click on View > Zoom to use the menu to change the font size. The shortcut Ctrl and 0 resets the zoom level to the default value.
The changes that you make here are valid for the session which means that they are automatically reset on the next start of the email client.
If you have general issues reading emails because of the size they are displayed in, you may prefer a solution that changes the font size of emails permanently.
To do so click on Tools > Options in the menu. This opens the settings menu of the email program. Here you need to click on Display > Formatting to display all font related formatting options Thunderbird makes available.
Use the pulldown menus to change the default font size or font type, or click on the advanced button for detailed font formatting options.
Here you can modify the default font for proportional, serif, sans-serif and monospace contents, set a minimum font size and select a region you want your fonts be optimized for. The changes that you make in the menus here are permanent until you modify them again here.
You can still change the font size for individual sessions using the first method described in this post though.
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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!