re :On Mac, when you compose a new email, it opens a separate window instead of opening a new tab.

Write window is separate and I've never known any other state. Some people in the past have asked for it to be in a tab. Personally, I like to see incoming mail and the address book symultaneously, so additional hopping between tabs would slow down work productivity.

As for knowing how to cycle through various windows or applications then that is not really a Thunderbird issue, but more of getting to know how a MAC can cycle through windows.

On Windows OS 'Alt + 'Tab' will allow you to cycle through opened windows.

Googled this which should help. http://superuser.com/questions/62390/mac-os-x-keyboard-shortcut-to-switch-between-windows

MAC

Thanks for your answer, and yes, i know that to 'write' has never been in tabs, and probably never will.

So that brought me to the next alternative, to be able to cycle/toggle between Thunderbird windows (not tabs).

When you cycle through windows on mac with alt and tab, it treats Thunderbird as one window - and not all of the instances/windows that are all open. IT IS an incredible pain, as you have to go to the program tray, hold down the Thunderbird icon until all of your windows titles show, and then you need to select the one that you want, if you can remember what the title was. It really is not efficient, and i cannot find anywhere on how to scroll through all Thunderbird windows... I hope that explains it a bit better. I cannot screen snap this, as the hover menu dissapears when trying to Command Shift 4.

Looking at this from another view point, can you explain why you have so many Write windows open at the same time ?

If you do not want to send at that moment, you can choose 'Send Later' and this closes the Write window and puts the email in the Outbox. If you are part way through composing you can save as draft and then close the Write window.

Update : I've just located this link and it seems to give some good info. http://www.danrodney.com/mac/

Look under the section : 'Managing Windows & Dialogs'

Thanks for the info from DanRodney. I have been working on Macs for 20 years, and know most of the shortcuts - but there are some good ones there that i forgot about.

The instructions do not work, as most keyboards in the world do not have the TILDE key. (i have tried with no success)

Switch to next window Cmd-Tilde(~)

I have 14 emails accounts, run several businesses and also attend to phone calls and cold visits, so if i am composing emails, I can get distracted from the task at hand - and i do not have time to save it to a draft and close it.

It makes perfect sense that there are several emails to compose opened, as Thunderbird will autosave them to the drafts folder (duplicated many times annoyingly). saving and hiding in a Drafts folder is an option, if you have the time to go through those two extra steps.

The Send Later is also handy, if you have managed to finish composing your emails. I write in three languages, so translation sometimes takes more time to stew over the quality of the response.

Regardless, all I want to do is cycle through my Thunderbird windows, like i do with all other programs.

If i can cycle, i can then multi-task, and see if any mails have been stranded and unfinished/unsent. (it happens all of the time).

Thanks for you help.