You have 2 options:

View Menu ---> Layout ---> Remove Check next to MESSAGE PANE

OR

move your mouse to the line between the message and the list of emails. It becomes an arrow. Click and drag the divider line completely to the BOTTOM of the thunderbird window and the email message will disappear.

Then, double click on emails and they should open into a NEW TAB in the thunderbird window.

Also, when you have an email open in its own tab, You can click and drag on the TAB for the email.... and drag it DOWN a little bit..... and let up. The email will open into its OWN WINDOW.

Hope that helps  : -)

erodrig97 said

In Thunderbird, the message pane shows (in one configuration) under the message listings. I would like to be able to open a separate window for the message pane, that interacts in the same way as the existing one. Is this possible? I realize one can open a message in a separate window, but how do you make a separate window the target for the message browser. That is, as you use the arrows keys to switch from one message to another, how does one get a separate window to be the target for viewing those messages such that the behavior is identical to the "built in" message pane. Thanks.

Yes, I am mostly aware of what you wrote, but it's nice to try it again, as I pretty much forgot some of the seperate window behaviors. For example, I guess I forgot that the same seperate windows can be refreshed as compared to generating a new window everytime a message is clicked on.

I did not realize one can pull down a tab to make it a seperate window. That is a nice tip.

I wonder if there is a way that simply using the arrow keys as one is scrolling through messages would trigger the separate display window to show the currently highlighted mail. This is the default behavior for the message pane that appears directly below the message listings. That is, for the default message pane, one does not need to click on the mouse for the message to apper.

Using the return key to display a message in the seperate window moves the mouse and keyboard focus to that seperate window. It would be nice to have the focus remain on the message lists if preferred.

Thanks for your reply, as it definitely gives me ideas for rapdily displaying through emails.