This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Listing of emails

  • 3 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by david

more options

Previous versions of Thunderbird listed all the emails of a folder in order of date, recipient or subject, as I chose. My new version 102.3.0 has taken to 'collapsing' several emails together, leaving only the 'parent' displayed (what ever 'parent' means), plus a chevron (>) to tell me that some are hidden. When I click the chevron the 'lower level' emails appear OK.

My problem is that I am not used to this. I overlook the chevron and then grumble that some emails appear to be missing.

Question: is there a menu option (where, please?) that turns this feature off? i.e. if an email goes into a folder, then it's guaranteed that it will occupy a line in that listing, rather than be hidden as a sub-ordinate to a parent email.

I tried to use Thunderbird 'help' to answer the question - but until I know the answer I can't really guess what question to ask.

Previous versions of Thunderbird listed all the emails of a folder in order of date, recipient or subject, as I chose. My new version 102.3.0 has taken to 'collapsing' several emails together, leaving only the 'parent' displayed (what ever 'parent' means), plus a chevron (>) to tell me that some are hidden. When I click the chevron the 'lower level' emails appear OK. My problem is that I am not used to this. I overlook the chevron and then grumble that some emails appear to be missing. Question: is there a menu option (where, please?) that turns this feature off? i.e. if an email goes into a folder, then it's guaranteed that it will occupy a line in that listing, rather than be hidden as a sub-ordinate to a parent email. I tried to use Thunderbird 'help' to answer the question - but until I know the answer I can't really guess what question to ask.

All Replies (3)

more options

What you're experiencing is "threading"; the powers that be at Thunderbird decided to make threading of emails the default. Many don't like it, so you're not alone. You can fix it for a single folder by highlighting the folder and selecting View>sort by>unthreaded. However, that can be a pain if you have lots of folders. To do multiple folders, here is that info:

More info: In config editor, you can change default that applies to NEW folders you set up: mailnews.default_view_flags 0=unthreaded

To set many folders, follow these steps:

   In the Message List view, in the column header on the far right, open the options menu.
   At the very bottom is the option:
   -> "Apply current view to..."
   -> "Folder and its children..."
   -> Hover over an account
   -> In the next menu don't select a folder. Instead select the account name itself.

This isn't a perfect solution, but it does address the issue of unthreading many folders.

more options

You refer to 'config editor' but haven't suggested where I might find that. When I ask Google that question I get reply ' open the 3-bar menu on the right'. Then I think it said look for 'preferences'. There is no 'preferences' option in the 3-bar drop-down menu. One step forward and two backwards, as usual. Come back Outlook Express.

Further experience of this 'threading' - which I didn't ask for - suggests that as a result the emails cannot now be listed in full chronological order. How idiotic is that? Do you think the Mozilla people ever use the new product after they've taken away from us the one we've worked hard to understand? That's the sort of thing Microsoft could be expected to do.

more options

Try tools>settings>general ('preferences' was changed to 'settings' in recent release). Yes, emails can be listed in chronological order.