The Correspondents column is intended to simplify the appearance of Thunderbird.

Every message in Thunderbird will have been sent BY you or TO you. So if you were to have From: and Recipient: columns, each and every message would mention you on one of these two columns. The Correspondents column removes this redundancy by listing only "the other party" in your communications, and adds the arrow to indicate whether you sent to them, or they sent to you.

If you don't like the arrow, don't mind the visual clutter, and have space on your screen, you could reinstate the separate From: and Recipient: columns.

In order to better assist you with your issue could you please provide us with a screenshot? If you need help to create a screenshot, please see How do I create a screenshot of my problem?

Once you've done this, attach the saved screenshot file to your forum post by clicking the Browse... button below the Post your reply box. This will help us to visualize the problem.

Thank you!

I understand your long paragraph, and have been glad to utilize the Correspondents column. My question is this . . . It is just in the past couple weeks that arrows have begun appearing next to certain names. Probably 3% (?) of the names in that column. Also, there will be an arrow next to one of two of the names of those who wrote to me, but not next to the rest of the names of the same person.

Why is this happening now? How can I get rid of these few seemingly random arrows; but still use Correspondents column? The way it's always been until the last couple weeks. Thank you for your help.

There are other arrows for forwarded or replied-to messages, so as Fabian asked, a screenshot might be helpful for us to be sure we understand what you are seeing.

My preferred theme stopped working the other day and I switched to another one. The appearance of the Correspondents arrows changed quite drastically. So, what we see is not an absolute and does depend on other factors, hence the value of a screen shot.

But none of this explains the apparent intermittency you describe. It might be useful to do a repair on the folder to force the message summaries and hence their classifications to be rebuilt. If we are indeed looking at the Correspondents arrows, I'd expect every email message to have one. (Messages in feeds and newsgroups are another matter.)