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Table of Contents
Thunderbird_Hacks
Useful Extensions
This is a list of extensions I find useful to have installed in Thunderbird:
- British English Dictionary
- Enigmail - Handles PGP signing and encryption of mail. Requires gnupgp or similar to be installed on the system. Doesn't like anything but text/plain format emails though.
- Lightning - Outlook style calendaring for Thunderbird.
- Mail Redirect - Allows you to bounce (rather than forward) email to another address, amongst other things.
- Provider for Google Calendar - Bidirectional sync to your Google calendars. Doesn't always play nicely; need to spend some time working out why.
- QuoteCollapse - Uses folding to hide away the quoted parts of emails so you can see the real content. Useful if your contacts insist on replying below the a quoted message (which happens to be the Thunderbird default too).
Advanced Config Editor
Thunderbird has a similar advanced configuration editor to the one found in Firefox. It can be accessed via:
Tools→Options→Advanced→General→Config Editor
The advanced config editor will be needed to apply most of the hacks documented on this page.
Default folder sort order
By default, Thunderbird sorts IMAP folders by date ascending, so that new emails appear at the bottom of the mail list. For reference, this is the date sent, not date received; mail sent from a machine with a broken system clock will not appear at the correct place in the folder.
To invert the default sort order, open the config editor and use the filter to search for the <tt>mailnews.default_sort_order</tt> key. Change the value to <tt>2</tt>, for descending sort order.
The field on which the folder is sorted can also be changed using the <tt>mailnews.default_sort_type</tt> key.
The following keys are related to this hack:
mailnews.default_sort_order mailnews.default_sort_type mailnews.default_view_flags mailnews.default_news_sort_order mailnews.default_news_sort_type mailnews.default_news_view_flags
The following values are acceptable for the above keys:
sort_order:
byNone 17 byPriority 23 byLocation 29 byDate 18 * byStatus 24 byTags 30 bySubject 19 * bySize 25 byJunkStatus 31 byAuthor 20 * byFlagged 26 byAttachments 32 byId 21 ** byUnread 27 byAccount 33 byThread 22 byRecipient 28 byCustom 34 * = commonly desired values ** = by Order Received (?)
sort_type:
ascending 1 descending 2
view_flags – the second group of values can be added to one of the first group to combine effects, with several limitations:
Unthreaded 0 Threaded 1 Grouped 64 [[mail|only (?)]] ShowIgnored 8 [[news|only]] ShowUnreadOnly 16 ShowExpanded 32 [[doesn't|seem to work]]
This hack was brought to you from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86845#c74.
