How to forward emails in Thunderbird using custom headers

Whenever I forward emails in the Thunderbird email client all headers of that email are attached to it at the top. This means that the actual message is not displayed above the fold, and that recipients who receive the forwarded email need to scroll down to read it.
This is far from ideal, and I always wondered why this is the case and if there was a way around this. Turns out there is, but it is not ideal in my opinion.
The easiest way to fix this is to switch from full headers to standard headers in Thunderbird. I display all email headers by default as I go through the information at times to find out more about the sender or email.
So, what I do whenever I need to forward an email in Thunderbird is to switch headers from full to normal. This is done by selecting View > Headers from the menu at the top. If the menu is not displayed to you, hit the Alt-key on your keyboard first to display it. Once I have forwarded the message, I switch the headers back to all.
It works, but it is far from ideal. If you forward emails regularly and do not want to switch every time or permanently to normal headers, then you can use add-ons to change how emails are forwarded.
SmartTemplate4 is a useful extension that is compatible with all recent versions of Thunderbird. It allows you to change the default write, reply and forward template of the mail client.
If you select forward from the options after installation, you can disable Thunderbirds default quote header and replace it with your own custom header information (or none at all if you want).
A click on advanced displays information about variables that you can use here. There are lots of them, and the ones that you may find most useful are listed below:
- %from% displays the sender's name.
- %from(mail)% displays the sender's email.
- %to% displays the recipients name.
- %to(mail)% displays the recipient's email.
- %date% displays date and time taken from mail header.
- %subject% displays the subject of the email.
You can use HTML formatting, e.g. bold, but need to enable the option on the configuration page. Here you can also replace line breaks with breaks automatically so that you do not have to add them to your template.
All mail accounts use the same template by default. You can override that behavior by selecting one of the accounts in SmartTemplate4's settings and disable the "use common" option displayed here.
This enables you to select different read, write and forward information for that account.






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!