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

Can I make the reply text a different color from the received text as I could in Outlook Express?

more options

In Outlook Express I was able to set an option to always make my text color a certain color and leave the color of the received email unaltered when I sent a reply. It was then easy to distinguish the sender and receiver when reading a thread. I can not find a similar option in Mozilla Thunderbird.

In Outlook Express I was able to set an option to always make my text color a certain color and leave the color of the received email unaltered when I sent a reply. It was then easy to distinguish the sender and receiver when reading a thread. I can not find a similar option in Mozilla Thunderbird.

All Replies (3)

more options

You can change the Composition options to set the color of your text when you write e-mails.

Menu bar: Tools: Options: Composition section: General tab From the "three-bar" menu button on the top right: Options: Options: Composition section: General tab

You will see what I show in my screenshot below. Click on the Text Color to change it.

more options

I have already tried this option. The problem is that it changes ALL of the text to the color I select. What I am trying to do is to automatically make the reply text that I type, a different color from the received text. The thread of the message will then show my text in a different color from the other person's text. This was easily achieved in Windows Live email and Outlook Express.

more options

Before I stopped using coloured text all the time, I noticed that if the e-mail I was replying to was in plain text (ie. not HTML), then the quoted e-mail would also be in my text colour. If the quoted e-mail was HTML, then it would keep its own colour. This is probably what is happening to you.

All I can suggest is that you manually change the colour of your text, or manually change back the colour of the quoted text.