Thunderbird 3: can't change column width?

23
2013-12
  • rumtscho

    I recently installed Thunderbird 3.0.3. Just noticed a suboptimal UI setting: in the upper pane, which lists the e-mails in the current folder, the Date column is about 200px wide. So when I keep the window at 480x600, all I see in a row is:

    | tree icon | favourites icon | attachment icon | read icon | junk icon | Date and time, followed by 5cm whitespace | ... | P
    Where "P" is the first letter of the name of the sender. And the "..." is actually shown this way, I have no idea which column it is meant to be. But I don't see neither the sender, nor the message subject, which makes scrolling a folder for a certain mail rather pointless. I see these when I maximize the window, actually the columns are then not only bigger, they are arranged in another sequence. But I feel that holding a mail client permanently maximised at 1600x1200 is a waste of screen real estate.


    My naive solution attempt was to try to go with the mouse cursor to the right edge of the date column and try to shrink it by moving the cursor left while holding down the left mouse button. Not only is this default behaviour for all resizable columns I've ever encountered in GUIs, the cursor actually turns into a horizontal double-headed arrow. But pulling has no effect at all. I cannot make a wide column narrow, and I cannot make the narrow columns wide. I didn't find anything in the preferences either. So can please somebody explain how to get the columns arranged sensibly?

    Edit: I found out that I only have the problem when I drag the Thunderbird window to a GridMove screen area. It gets automatically resized, but doesn't notice the resize event or something, so the column width remains the same as under a maximized window. First making the window narrow using the mouse helps with column width, but the width of the mail pane is still too wide (rows don't reflow). Anyway, this seems to be a bug caused by the combination of the two applications and not a configuration problem, so I guess I'll have to live with it.

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    Change the default sorting order in Thunderbird
  • Joey

    Thunderbird (2.something here as 3 is still not stable and had some nasty bugs last I tried) sorts mails by date by default. This is fine, however, it sorts them so that the newest ones are at the bottom of the list, which ... is not fine. Since Thunderbird saves its sort settings on a per-folder basis (and I have many folders) I regularly run into folders I've rarely or never been in which still have the old sorting order.

    Is there any way to globally change the default sorting order to "Threads, newest messages at the top" (or anything else, which, I assume might be possible as well then)?


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  • IQAndreas

    Open the Config Editor from the following menu options:

    Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Config Editor

    Or if you are using an older version of Thunderbird:

    Preferences > Advanced > General > Config Editor

    Type mailnews.default in the Filter bar to bring up a small list of preferences to configure. It will display similar to below:

    Preference Name                      Status       Type        Value
mailnews.default_news_sort_order:    default      integer     x
mailnews.default_news_sort_type:     default      integer     y
mailnews.default_sort_order:         default      integer     x
mailnews.default_sort_type:          default      integer     y

    In the above, replace the x and y of the value by double-clicking the name of the preference and replacing it with one of the following values as required:

    x (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en/nsMsgViewSortOrder)

    1 = Ascending
2 = Descending

    y (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en/nsMsgViewSortType)

    17 = None
18 = Date
19 = Subject
20 = Author
21 = ID (Order Received)
22 = Thread
23 = Priority
24 = Status
25 = Size
26 = Flagged
27 = Unread
28 = Recipient
29 = Location
30 = Label
31 = Junk Status
32 = Attachments
33 = Account
34 = Custom
35 = Received

    So if you wanted to sort all mail by Thread, Descending (newest at top), the preferences in the config editor will look like this:

    mailnews.default_sort_order:    default     integer      2
mailnews.default_sort_type:     default     integer     22
  • Oliver Salzburg

    A simpler solution : Using the Thunderbird SortPref module.

    enter image description here

    Provides settings to control which order messages are sorted initially and by which field as well as whether to display in threaded mode. Please note this data ends up stored in each folder, so changing control values only affect new folders or those with a rebuilt index. The mechanics are described in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86845 - this extension merely adds gloss to somebody else's actual code.

  • John T

    Using about:config (under Preferences -> Advanced -> General)

    mailnews.default_news_sort_order: news sort order
mailnews.default_news_sort_type: news sort column
mailnews.default_sort_order: mail sort order
mailnews.default_sort_type: mail sort column

    had this saved in a text file, got it from an article a long time ago don't remember where, but those are the values that will flip sort order.

  • slhck

    Actually, in version 17.08, you just need to go to Menu > View > Sort by > Date > Descending, and voilà.