coming from Thunderbird:Feature_Discussions

Address Book

More flexible address book

• Variant number of email addresses, phone numbers and instant messaging nicks/addresses
• Workflow to merge duplicate contacts by selecting them and triggering a "merge" option.
• Integration of the birthday and anniversary fields into the GUI and the calendar (see MoreFunctionsForAddressBook and ThunderBirthDay)

Ingomueller.net 13:28, 29 January 2008 (PST)

See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424643

Network sharing of addressbook and calendar

• File based addressbook sharing: Allow users to connect to an addressbook on a network share. Editing LDAP entries would also be nice.
• File based Calendar sharing: WebDav is good, but currently broken in Lightning .7, SMB's would like an easy way to share Calendars.

Addressbook details

For roaming addresing to be really useful LDAP+TLS (editable ldap address books) or WebDAV+TLS (upload/download .ldif files) support would really be required. The SSL support should offer client certificates from the store, so if the address book server demands the user's client cert they'll still be able to connect.

WebDAV has the advantage that tbird already has a degree of support for it, and it's easy to support offline.

Editable LDAP solves some concurrency issues (if the client is open in more than one place), but might be harder to make work offline. Slurping an LDIF doesn't seem too hard, though.

Overall I suspect LDAP is the best option for addressbook

Ability to Custom Print from Address Book

One of the major limitations of the Thunderbird Address Book is that one has no choice as to how the variety of information is printed. It is currently impossible to create a phone book without emails unless the contacts listed have no email. It would be an extremely helpful feature if one could choose what they wanted to print, where, in what format. This would allow Thunderbird to step-in as a major PIM (Personal Information Manager) by organizing all aspects of a contact for non-digital reference. This is one of the points that Outlook has above Thunderbird and even then it has hardly been implemented, just some templates and page setup, but no field choice. If one could use Thunderbird to select fields for print Thunderbird would have increased adoption because there are currently few free programs that have this ability.

Requested new feature: bi-directional resizing of attached photos

I do computer consulting, and support senior citizens who are trying to use E-mail. They have endless trouble with sending photos by E-mail. A typical problem is that they attach a high resolution jpg to an E-mail, and don't understand why it takes so long to send, and why their recipients say that they can only see a corner of the image. There are various applications which will resize a photo so that it is suitable for E-mail, then call up the default mail program and start a new E-mail with the image attached. However, if you have already started an E-mail and want to attach a resized version of a large image, you have to separately resize the image with another program, save the image to disk, then find and attach the resized image. I have found many people have a lot of difficulty learning this procedure. I also find people who can resize the image, but then save with the same file name, overwriting their original high resolution version on the hard drive, essentially losing their original photo.

What I would like to see is a function which monitors what attachments are made to an E-mail. If the attachment is a high resolution jpg, an pop-up box would say something like:

"The selected image is too big to be fully displayed inside E-mails. Would you like to send a resized image which is readily viewed on most computer screens? (yes/no)"

For the inverse of this, when reading mail I would like to see Thunderbird automatically scale attached high resolution images so that the whole image is seen on the screen. This is already working in Firefox, where large images are rescaled to fit, and the the unscaled image is available by clicking with the mouse.

Commas in e-mail addresses

Commas in e-mail addresses shouldn't force Thunderbird to split these addresses into several parts. When I read old Outlook messages I often see things like this: "Hauser, Frank <frank@hauser.bla>" displayed as "Hauser" and "Frank <frank@hauser.bla>" separately. I haven't found a bug but this related one https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=242693

No "Exit" menu entry in Adress Book

The Exit (ctrl+Q) menu entry in the Adress Book is confusing. Only the Close (ctrl+W) menu entry is enough. People tend to click Exit instead of Close accidentally and close the whole Thunderbird application instead of the Adress Book.

Auto Search Lists from Address Book

Don't know if already achievable from any extensions. The idea is to have a functionality that every Address Book contact and group has an automatic search, so I can for example drag a contact from Address Book to a Saved Searches folder and get a saved search for that contact. Or have addresses on e-mails that are on the address book, have the ability to right-click and get a "view all messages from this user". This last search to be available as a button/option/right-click action on any Address Book entry. A "View by contacts" pre-defined search-folder might also be interesting.

OS X address book integration =

It would be nice if TB could access the address book on OS X. Read-only access would be enough. Just so that, when typing the email address, TB can complete the addresses from the OS X address book.

Personally I think that it should be possible not only to read it, but to write it. I'm the owner of an iPhone and I had to copy my address book entries to the OS-specific address book application to be able to synchronize. But now I cannot synchronize any more with Thunderbird. And I want this as I use Zindus to synchronize Thunderbird with my webmail running Zimbra. As a matter of fact, I really would love using only the standard address book which is BTW very good (at least on a Mac platform).

--Xperseguers 09:05, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Filter actions that integrate with the address book

Please add filter actions that relate to the Address Book, e.g.: Add Sender to Address Book and include in a certain group, Remove Sender from Address Book, Redirect Message to a person or group from the Address Book, and send a fixed message to a person or group from the Address Book. --Jh 06:35, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

Please also add a filter rule possibility to say "if FROM/TO/WHATEVER matches one of the contacts from a contact list in my adress book, then ...". It would then e.g. be easy to tag all mails from "Friends", because these contacts are already grouped in a contact list namend "Friends". --Mrpaule 04:52, 5 March 2011 (PST)

Make Junk filtering cover multiple or all address books

Not sure if this has already been addressed, but I have a not-so-uncommon issue with the "Do not mark messages as junk mail if the sender is in my address book" filter.

My contacts are organized in several address books (Personal, Company, Clients, etcetera). This filter allows only one address book to be identified as those contacts never to be "junked". So while senders found in my Personal address book, for example, will never be treated as junk, it's possible senders from my other "safe" address books will.

It would be much preferable to extend this functionality to cover more than one address book at a time, or to all address books if desired. While I can't give an example where it would be beneficial, it would make sense to also extend such choice to the Collected Addresses.

JF 18:23, 4 May 2008 (PDT)

Right click on an email address and send an email template

It would be nice to have the ability to right click on a mail address and send an email from the template folder. That would be useful within TB as well as a nice feature to FF. Practical application: send out resumes. :-) or product documentation. --T.burn 15:59, 13 June 2008 (PDT)

Address Book: "Saved Search Folder" ability

Allow ability to have "dynamic lists" of addresses based on search criteria. Apple Address Book is a good example. Also, as has probably been mentioned, would need ability to search on all fields in Address book (Notes field is a current blaring omission).

user:iveand

Address Book: Ability to edit multiple cards

Allow ability to edit multiple address cards simultaneously. An example would be for a "company field" or for the "notes field". The ability to "find/replace" would work nice with this... in this case having a "replace all" option.

user:iveand

Address Book: Ability to browse for contacts in Mailing List

Allow ability to browse for existing contacts to be included in a Distribution list, the existing manner of typing every contact it's very impractical.

user:martins79

Connect address book contacts with identities

Please include a field under each Address book contact where a user can select which identity will be used for outgoing messages to that address.

ie. all messages to boss@work.com automatically use default identity of me@work.com - Jcrow 18:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Messaging

HTML writing tools GUI redesign

The way tools are distributed in TB2.x is quite annoying and makes creating HTML mail a real pain. I think that most users do not really use more advanced HTML mail features because its not easy and obvious how to use them

Some particular things I would do:

• Move format tools from top menu to toolbar just above mail text area
• redesign right click context menu of mail text area to support some basic format settings
• redesign current editing toolbar with regard to new format toolbar or some other tools layout
• the toolbar/toolbars should show show current formatting of cursor position in text

Enhanded format=flowed delsp=yes

There is currently a quirk when sending text/plain, format=flowed messages: It works great when sending Western text. However, many Asian languages do not contain spaces. Thunderbird, when creating format=flowed messages, inserts a soft line break (a space-newline sequence). The resulting flowed text then has a spurious space, because format=flowed deltes the newline form the soft line break, but not the extra space. The cure for this would be to send format=flowed, delsp=yes text, so that Thunderbird removes the extra space. Thunderbird already handles format=flowed, delsp=yes text correctly for incoming mail, but it seems that Thunderbird cannot generate such messages. Details are in RFC 3676.

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26734

Easy navigation around messages

It is easy to see if the user replied or forwarded a message by the small arrow icons. However, there is no easy way to switch directly to the reply or to see to whom the message has been forwarded. Only one add-on addressed this problem ReplySearch, however the solution is not very convenient as for its speed and user interface. It would be great to have an option to be able to search linked messages (Outlook express was doing this very well, probably thanks to the fact that the mail was stored in a database structure).

I'll be great if all messages from a given sender could be selected by holding the alt key while clicking on a sender (as in Eudora). This is a very easy but powerful feature to organize e-mails, e.g. to delete or move messages originating from the same sender or a particular mail list. (Similarly all e-mails from the same date or with the same topic could be easily selected by holding the alt key and clicking on the date or topic column.)

Global Message Filters

It would be great if it were possible to set up global message filters that affected all accounts in Thunderbird. That not only helps with managing spam and newsletters. For example this would make it possible to automatically move personal e-mails sent to an IMAP business account to the designated folders on a private IMAP account (and vice versa). These filters could have generic options only such as mark messages read or move them to the trash folder. It would also be great if during filter creation the sender or topic or recipient of the current e-mail is automatically suggested as filter criteria.

Outgoing message filters

The ability to filter outbound messages is a basic one contained in many popular e-mail clients like The Bat! and Outlook. In Bugzilla there are tickets for this feature at least since 1999. Obviously alphas 1-3 of TB3 do not contain anything like it according to the respective release notes.

It should be possible to define filter rules for outgoing messages separately from inbound rules, e.g. for moving messages to target folders according to their recipients.

ALT RESOLUTION Backup

Anyone who uses Thunderbird for business or uses it for any important emails considers backing up their emails important. Ideally this functionality would allow for accounts to be backed up individually, multiple but not all accounts, and all accounts at once. Restore would offer the same functionality.

This functionality is currently available by the MozBackup extension utility. (sorry for the typo...)

It's not actually an extension. It's a third party standalone tool. Ideally this functionality would be available in Thunderbird by default and would expand upon the functionality Mozbackup currently offers. Particularly the ability to backup/restore individual mail accounts.

Ability to create and open a file in any place outside the local profile that can store emails, with compression and encryption for backup proposes or other.

(Migration) Check default settings if they are still appropriate

A major revision is always a good opportunity to change things like default settings that have been around for a long time. A good example for this is the forwarding mode (fixed), which is "as attachment" by default and is cause for many problems and inquiries in user forums, especially for new users just migrating from other e-mail clients. Changing it to "inline" would resolve many issues. There are most likely other settings for which the default was set a long time ago, where it appeared to be a good choice at that time, but where it may no longer be the best choice today.

Profile switcher

Integrate a profile switcher. It is too complicated for inexperienced users to find out how to create a new profile and even more complicated to make icons with 'thunderbird.exe -P "username"'. A profile switcher in the file menu of Thunderbird will allow Mama and Papa to create and switch profiles easily. (The very old Outlook Express has such a feature.) https://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/profileswitcher-en.html made a prototype add-on. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=245070 (and then also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=374322 )

Convert to UTF-8 automatically

It is very, very annoying for users (e.g. my inexperienced colleagues) that they were often asked for "Convert to UTF-8?" DURING writing an e-mail or when sending. There should be an option to automate this procedure (always convert without prompting, aks before convert, or never convert) so that nobody has to answer this question over and over again. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=414657 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=410333

Bug 410333 has been fixed and checked in, thus this is no longer an issue. --Rsx11m

TNEF/dat attachments

It should be possible to open TNEF/dat mail attachments from Outlook in Thunderbird without the need of any third party program like Fentun. This is an usability issue.

See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77811

Reading Outlook MSG files

It should be possible to open/read mails from Outlook saved as MSG files on hard disk. Switchers from Outlook to Thunderbird have maybe saved many e-mails in the Outlook MSG file format (especially in companies). For that it's impossible to read such messages without Outlook. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=297760

I totally agree - I will need this to transfer between different job sites (head office uses MS Outlook, feild offices are on our own - so we chose Thunderbird). I know I could forward, but I don't always have a connection - and often use a jumpdrive to carry info. andy

Print output with name of receiver

When various people print their mails at one printer (e.g. at work or at home when separate profiles exist) it is very useful to see the receiver on top of the print output in big letters like Outlook do. So everyone who take the printouts can see at a glance to whom the printout belongs to. https://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/index-en.html made the add-on "PrintingTools" which allows a better visible header. But this add-on adds a second "File" menu entry for "extended print options" which isn't useful and user-friendly.

That has been filed and confirmed as bug 427474 --Rsx11m 18:20, 24 June 2008 (PDT)

DONE: GUI to create/edit signature(s)

For inexperienced people now it is almost impossible to make and integrate their own signature(s) into Thunderbird. It is hard to find the signature option in the account options. And after she found the signature option, she has to create a signature outside of Thunderbird (as txt or html - how should she know that?). I suggest a simple GUI to create a signature per e-mail account (in txt and html format) and a "database" where this signatures are stored to include existing signatures in new e-mail accounts.

See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324495

Thomas Lendo 23:20, 06 March 2008 (CET)

I'd like add a problem with signatures copied accross system boundaries (Windows to MAC). The signature files seem to default to the system code page. I had to edit all my sigs which I had copied from Windows to my MAC (or vice versa) to correct the national characters. I built in signature editor should take care of that.

Marcus von Cube 10:35, 16 June 2008 (CET)

Built-in Help Viewer

Efforts to get an integrated Help Viewer for Thunderbird are ongoing since 2004 in bug 253334 and appear to have stopped about two years ago. Given that off-line help is an integral part of any application, and usually the first step of trouble-shooting, would be good to see it progressing for Thunderbird as well. Both Firefox and SeaMonkey have such viewers. The web-based help is not context sensitive and frequently considered insufficient, also not accessible when not connected. --Rsx11m 07:15, 23 March 2008 (PDT)

Built-in Notes Section

I know that this may be going to Microsoft for some people, but I actually like the notes tab that Outlook has. Although there has been an extension that allows you to associate a note with an email, I think if there was a notes component built into Thunderbird it would just add more functionality to it and create and even more robust email client.

Pasting attachments when composing mail

When composing mail, there’s currently no way to attach a file (which was added to the clipboard) by pasting it, using either ctrl-v or right-click on the mouse and paste in the attachment area. It would be very convenient to add such a paste functionality.

Pete 15:54, 11 April 2008 (GMT+02:00)

Truncate e-mail and/or personal data in forwarded messages

People often forward e-mail funnies around and this is usually one way how their and other people's addresses might get harvested, so there should be functionality that would truncate either the domain name or all or part of anything that precedes the @ character in the message body:

• Maybe I don't want to spread e-mail addresses;
• Maybe I don't want to spread people's full names;
• Or any combination thereof.

-Mardus 22:00, 11 April 2008 (PDT)

This is actually a frequently seen issue on the MZ Thunderbird forums. Users want to see and edit the message before they forward it and are then irritated that the message shows up as an attachment (by default), thus is not accessible. The patch for bug 230448 would switch the forward default to inline, thus simplifying this part as well. --Rsx11m 16:27, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

What you are describing is a preference that can be set and unset, AFAIK. I know it exists in SeaMonkey. But automatically truncating all e-mail addresses is something that I want to see. -Mardus 01:11, 18 April 2008 (PDT)

This is correct, the main intent of the comment was to confirm that what you describe is a problem. Forwarding inline is a necessity to modify the message, manually or automatically. --Rsx11m 05:36, 18 April 2008 (PDT)

User definable smart URLs

Currently Thunderbird automatically converts email addresses and URL's into clickable URLs. It would be nice if I could define my own mapping for regular expressions into clickable URLs.

This would make it possible to turn phonenumers automagically into skype/voip URLs , addresses or zipcodes into google-maps URL's etc.

Jkl 21:24, 19 May 2008 (CET)

A Heavily improvement of MAPI-support

MAPI-support is still a major issue in Thunderbird. Providing MAPI-support in Thunderbird 3 would even address two of the four goals for Thunderbird 3 as described on the planning page:

Goal 2: To increase adoption of Thunderbird
Currently there's (very) low adoption of Thunderbird by users who need MAPI, because Thunderbird 2.0 doesn't fully support Simple MAPI. Increasing MAPI support would mean a new group of potential users.

Goal 3: To improve usability
Currently users have to experiment with 3th party plug-in's to make MAPI more or less functional. Also as described on MozillaZine, these plugins and their support are buggy. Native support for MAPI address the usability issue for these users.

Beside addressing these goals it would also target a bunch of bugs (a search on "MAPI" gave me 63 results), varying from minor to critical.

Finally, MAPI could then be used, for example, accessing hotmail-accounts. This would target goal 2 by the large userbase of hotmail and goal 3 which would lessen the need to use webmail-plugins which often trouble a lot of users.

Shadow_Dragon 17:44, 29 May 2008 (GMT+01:00)

Allow selection of specific Point Size for fonts in HTML messages

Currently, Thunderbird allows you to set the size of a font based on the web parameters - e.g., small, medium, large, etc. Other email clients behave more like text editors and allow you to specify font size - e.g., 10pt, 12 pt, etc.

I agree, this is a good option especially for business users who exchange email messages with Outlook users. It would give the user greater options to control how email will look when viewed in Outlook. The way emails look in business can impact how a business is viewed by others.

I'd like the ability to enlarge the font size in the Compose window WITHOUT changing the font size used to transmit or to print a message. This ability would be particularly useful for people who find it hard to see small print on large screens.

I strongly agree. Thunderbird is really overdue for a much improved editor, particularly in terms of font size handling. A lot of users want to get away from Outlook, but control over font sizes and tables; and lots of small improvements like the colour swatch sticking to the last colour selected are necessary before they can make the move. I think this is a contentious issue because a lot of developers seem to have a fixed concept of how e-mails should be used, and they declare these requirements to be outside it. Tsuchan 13:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree also. And more so than that; as Tsuchan points out, it would be good to see the editor not worry about the existing requirements of email but instead allow even non-html font and font size be handled in such a way that plain text emails can be displayed separate from how they are sent or composed. While this may require an automated preview mode prior to send, it would still be worth it. - KitchM

Many versions ago, probably when Thunderbird wasn't very far removed from Netscape, you could select specific font sizes by number. I was mightily inconvenienced when the builders took that away and substituted what I consider the idiot light of font size control, the enlarge and reduce buttons. More of the ubiquitous dumbing-down, with the predictable consequence of reduced usefulness. Please do bring back specific point sizes. I'd be everlastingly grateful. - Laurie.s 4/7/10

List messages on two lines

When the panes are laid out in vertical view and the message list is too narrow to display all the columns, Outlook automatically switches to two lines per message. This allows room to display the message contents at a comfortable width.

--Samk 10:44, 9 June 2008 (PDT)

Display favorite folders above folder tree

Currently, Thunderbird requires the user to click on the arrows to switch between folder views. But for many people, there's plenty of space in the left pane to display favorite folders at the same time as the folder tree. This would make it much easier to navigate between the most frequently used folders.

--Samk 10:44, 9 June 2008 (PDT)

Display Account Name in bold only when there are unread messages

Currently, each Account Name is always displayed in bold, along with any mailbox that contains unread messages. This makes it difficult to tell at a glance whether there are any unread messages.

--Samk 10:44, 9 June 2008 (PDT)

Attachment Handling (at least on OS X)

Attachments are saved on the desktop and then opened. Some suggestions:

• Save the attachment to a temporary location and remove it later automatically
• Allow filing of attached (forwarded) mails into a folder
• Open JPGs inline (TB 2.0.0.14 on OS X keeps asking what to do.)

--Marcus von Cube 01:48, 16 June 2008 (PDT)

For those who work every day with large attachments would be foundamental to have the option to automatically detach attachments from incoming messages (now you have to do it with an extension like AttachmentExtractor) and NOT to store a copy of sent attachments in the sent mailbox (AttachmentExtractor can't detach them automatically).

--Ocatarinetabelasciscix 01:06, 28 September 2009 (UTC/GMT:+1)

IMAP Threading Robustness

Thunderbird has some difficult-to-pin-down-and-reproduce issues with threading, especially on slow machines and on remote (eg X11 forwarded) displays. Most of the issues I've seen turn up on Linux builds.

The most common ones I see are:

- IMAP backend stops responding. It won't quit with the rest of the app, stops servicing requests for messages, etc. It doesn't die in response to SIGTERM, only SIGKILL.

- Sometimes attachments seem to be truncated on save from an IMAP account. A different amount of the file is written each attempt, and often an untruncated file is saved successfully. This is very hard to reproduce.

Allow folder creation in the file message dialog

It would be useful to be able to create a folder while filing a message. I sometimes want to move a message somewhere only to see that the destination folder hasn't yet been created earlier.

--Marcus von Cube 01:52, 16 June 2008 (PDT)

Allow group by some criteria and order by another one

It would be great to be able to group by name (from) and choose the order by date ascending or descending.

--Paulo Marques - 21 June 2008 - 18:30

Support multiple users and user account authorization

We really need an email client that will allow multiple users to manage their email one the same PC.

- Each user creates an "user account" in which multiple email accounts can be created. - The "user account" should be password protectable so that emails within an "user account" remains confidential. - Each user sends and retrieves his/her own emails and does not trigger a send/retrieve action for other "user accounts" on the same PC.

- Simultaneous access (Thunderbird muti-session) from PCs on LAN to the message store will be great.

SMTP (Outgoing Server) robustness

When moving a notebook between home and work, sending email requires a SMTP change due to ISP's requiring the use of their own SMTP servers. So if you use Thunderbird at work you have to change your SMTP server to that of the company's DSL ISP. When getting home, you have to change it to that of your 3G ISP.

Suggestions:

• Thunderbird 3/4 should be able to determine which SMTP to use by sensing the network according to user specified data.
• The user should be able to quickly access the SMTP selections from the "Compose a new message" window. Then after changing the SMTP server here it should remain changed for all accounts until changed again.
• Thunderbird could attempt sending via a certain SMTP server, then, upon failure it should try the next server in the SMTP list. When a mail has been successfully sent via a certain outgoing server, that server should be set to be the current outgoing server for all accounts.
• How about a drop down property (like the "From" address) that selects the current outgoing SMTP server to use, for that email? By default it would follow some simple assumption. For example if the FROM is set to fred@someplace.com, then it would guess that given the SMTP server with "someplace.com" as a domain is the place to send that email.

Additional Options for Date Column Format

Create additional values for the Date Column format. See page: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Date_display_format

The additional value would be formatted as follows:

Value    Meaning                  Example date and time
5    Abbreviated day/date/time    Fri 12/31/1999 10:23 AM
6    Customized using tokens      %dow %mm/%dd/%yyyy %hr:%mn:%ss %ampm

The new value "5" would add to the current list of date format options. The new value "6" would allow the user to pick and choose from available tokens and select the order. This would allow more flexibility and user control of the Date Column.

I definitely like option "6" for templating the date format, thus being independent from the operating system settings if desired. Like this case, using templates in addition to fixed sets of choices would be benficial, e.g., also for reply and forward headers. --Rsx11m 00:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Redesign of Options Menu

We have a rough draft of a potential redesign of the Options menu for TB3 at Preference Settings. This is related to Bug 448716.

DONE Indexing Emails

I would like to see a mail indexing feature that either indexes the mails once a day or updates the index with each incoming/sent mail to enable the user to search quickly all mails in all folders on an IMAP account. With Thunderbird 2, it takes ages to search for a mail in all folders of a remote account. --Renewe 14:36, 30 January 2008 (PST)

Unless you're really desperate, it is sometimes useful to make your search more specific. -Mardus 21:53, 11 April 2008 (PDT)

One (simple) solution could be to by default search offline on IMAP accounts. In that case, search is almost instantaneous. That is what I personally do manually: go offline, search, then go back online... Note: full contents search is then limited to downloaded emails, which is logical (impossible to search on server emails without downloading them). IMHO it's sufficient... -- LorenzoTheGeek 2008-dec-18

This is a necessary update for any mail client which seeks to be "enterprise" grade. Renewe's correct - it should automatically index updates/deletions on the server so that the client always approximately mirrors the server. Mail.app has a "rebuild mailbox" option which can be used to manually sync if there is an error - borrowing this idea would be useful. This single missing feature is preventing Thunderbird from being rolled out at a number of organizations (and we may migrate to another IMAP client at my organization because of it). This project seems like an obvious candidate to be merged with your mailbox cleanup project. --Chris Hiestand 2009-03-06

Reply to an email with a template

Reply to an email with a template. If the template has an attachment; insert the attachment into the reply. --T.burn 15:59, 13 June 2008 (PDT)

Add automatically (Opera like) the Sender virtual folders for mail classification

Opera provides a very simple and practical design for mail classifying in virtual folders based on the Sender. The functionality exists on TB but is activable on search criteria rule by rule. It's a good functionality but rather for a fine mail classification.

The ability to access mail directly on a "sender" based classification would help

Right-click on message in Inbox to view with different options

Right-click a message in the Inbox and select "View as" in the context menu with values of "Plain Text" or "Original HTML". This would allow the user to have the default option set to Original HTML, but would allow the user to view a suspicious email as plain text with a simple right-click option without having to change the default setting.

Add message filter option to check for Attachment and size

Add a message filter option "Attachment", "is greater than / is less than", "some value". Currently there is an option for message "Size", but no option specifically for checking for attachments and associated attachment size.

DONE Add warning if there is no attachment and text contains "attached" or "attachment"

Lot's of times I forget to attach files to an email message. Would be nice to get an optional warning if I talk about an attachment in text but forget to attach a file.

Add optional ability to insert HTML "Style" code at the beginning and end of the email message

Add options to allow advanced users to update the prefs file with an HTML line to insert at the beginning of the message body and an HTML line to insert at the end of the message body:

(1) HTML to insert at beginning of message: (user-specified HTML code line)
(2) HTML to insert at end of message: (user-specified HTML code line)

Example of optional prefs:

HTML to insert at beginning of message: <div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">
HTML to insert at end of message: </div>

If the optional prefs are specified, then Thunderbird should insert the HMTL lines at the beginning and end of the message body. The resulting example message source is:

<div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">
This is the only line in my Thunderbird message body.
</div>

Add a date/time token for time zone?

So much email involves communication across time zones. When quoting a message in one's reply, it is nice (and possible with the half-dozen other email programs I've used since 1994) to include the time zone in the attribution line. Example:

On 21 November 2008 at 17:57 UTC - 0500, kazar <mozillazine at datatude dot net> posted this suggestion

thanks Kazar 22:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

This may be solved by the suggested reply-header templates in bug 107884 --Rsx11m

I just found bug 218926 that addresses the need for a new token more specifically. 107884 is about providing a UI as opposed to only a Config Editor setting. 218926 deals specifically with the need for an additional token. kazar

Optional Formats or Customization of the Reply/Forward Quote Header

Provide multiple format options or ability to customize the reply/forward quote header that is generated by Thunderbird when a message is "replied-to" or a message is "forwarded". The following formats are especially needed by businesses using Thunderbird and exchanging email with Outlook users.

(1) Allow options to format plain-text reply/forward headers as follows:

––––– Original Message –––––
From: Jane Doe <janedoe@gmail.com>
To: John <johndoe@gmail.com>
CC: Jimmy <jimmydoe@gmail.com>
Sent: Sun 12/07/2008 6:30:08 PM -0500
Subject: Check out this website

(2) Allow options to format HTML reply/forward headers as follows (note the horizontal line <hr> before the text):

---

(3) Also support reply quote header extensions such as:

• http://forum.addonsmirror.net/index.php?showtopic=1322
• Version 0.4.3 XPI: http://forum.addonsmirror.net/ext/extthunderbird/TB_Reset_Quote_Header_0.4.3.xpi
• Version 0.3.1 XPI: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/760
• Author's Extensions: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/user/2058
• http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Internet-Utilities/ThunderBird-Reset-Quote-Header.shtml

Thunderbird Reset Quote Header Extension version 0.4.3 works great with Thunderbird 2 if you change the maxvers in the XPI. Try updating the maxvers when testing with Thunderbird 3.

These reply quote options enhance the ability to handle email communications by providing better indication of original message author and date of original message, this is especially required in business email communication. Many times in business email, a user will reply and cc copy new people on the email. The cc people added to the email need to have the full original email to understand the reply. Business emails also need the tracking information such as date, time, FROM, TO, and CC recipients as an email is forwarded and replied multiple times among different users so tasks and action items can be tracked with dates.

See bug 218258 on Outlook-style reply headers, or - more general - bug 107884 on the implementation of reply-header templates. --Rsx11m

---

I agree with what was posted above, especially for reply and reply-all.

Something like what is used for inline forwarded message (copied below) would be great!!! I'd be happy if I could set the default reply & reply-all to the format used by forward in-line.

––––– Original Message–––––

Subject: Original Subject goes here Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2008 12:00:25 -0700 From: Original_sender@hotmail.com To: Original_Recipient@hotmail.com CC: ALL_Those_Originally_CCd@hotmail.com

Thanks.

Configurable delay on sending messages?

A very common usage pattern is to type out an email (perhaps too quickly), hit Send, and then soon realize that a mistake was made -- but it is too late, the email is already sent. There are some add-ons (SL8TR and BlunderDelay) which partially address this, but not very well.

It's such a common pattern that I think it should be built in: a preference setting, "Hold outgoing messages for [_] minutes," which could default to zero to make the behavior the same as TB2. But for a value > 0, each message would be held (perhaps in the Unsent folder) for that long before going out. If the user realizes she made a mistake, she can just go to the Unsent folder, and open that message up again (which should automatically take it out of Unsent and turn it back into a draft, just like when typing a new message).

This would be a simple but powerful feature that would save a lot of people the hassle of sending corrections (or just living with mistakes), and probably improve the overall quality of email too.

JoeStrout 21:24, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Single click distribution list reduction

Often a user will do a "reply all" but with the intention of removing a one or more recipients in the "to" and "cc" fields. The current version of Thunderbird require a lot of clicking and backspacing to eliminate a recipient. This request is for an "x" widget by each recipient that can be clicked to efficiently remove that recipient from the thread.

This is more productive than the existing method described above, or by doing a "reply" instead of "reply all" and manually reconstructing the partial distribution list.

Gstansell

Add a "Send and File" option

It would be nice to have a "Send and File" button next to the current "Send" one. When pressed, this button would open a small window containing the tree of folders, and selecting one would store the sent message there directly.

User:cactux

UI: show all messages of a thread in one page

This idea comes from Gmail (and maybe previously from somewhere else): when reading a thread with several messages, display all messages in one page, to allow to read them without having to go to next message. The text from previou messages should be folded (especially for messages where the author put his text above the message). To have a more precise idea: read a thread in a gmail account, with several messages (some read, some unread).

User:cactux

Account Settings: Security and Manage Identities

Allow selecting separate X.509 certificates for all managed identities.

user:szimszon

Status Bar Improvement

The Status Bar area has been traditionally used as a display of the program processes. I support this feature and I suggest that it be expanded. The current state of it is fairly useless since the information is gone before one can read it and act upon it.

One of the most needed changes would be an expansion of the information displayed as mail servers are accessed for new mail. It would be nice to give feedback that expands upward and allows the information to be displayed for a longer period of time. The amount of time that the information is shown before it fades out would be settable in the preferences section. Being able to optionally route that information to a log file would be nice.

The great advantage would be to be able to see the feedback as multiple accounts are accessed so as to have time to see how many messages each had and downloaded, as well as having more time to monitor the connection success and relative speed. Being able to customize this would make that part of the process much more useful for those of us who care about such things, and would point out more clearly the problems which might be ongoing with one account or another.

user:KitchM

Spell Check Improvements

1. There appears to be a flaw, by design or oversight, in the spell checker. Rather than flagging the same words each time the checker is run, it should have a setup option to make the "Ignore All" choice mark the selected word as correct, once that choice is made. Spell checks after that should ignore that same word.

user:KitchM

2. Spell check has low usability, you can only see the word to be changed, not the context, (in the spell check window), You are unable to choose the original word. If there are words in your text that shouldnt be there you can't remove them. You have to do that in the text afterwards, making the spell and text correction take 2-3 iterations, instead of just 1. This makes for a considerable slower workflow than neccessary (2-4 times slower), and it is also easier to get confused.

user:cognacc

Update HTML Editor to use "font style" -- and Eliminate "font face" and "font size" Elements

Update the Thunderbird HTML editor and stop using the "font face" and "font size" elements such as:

 <font face="Arial"> ... </font>
 <font size="-1"> ... </font>
 

Update the Thunderbird HTML message compose editor GUI to include 3 dropdown selections for the following items:

 1) Font Name (dropdown options: Arial, Times, sans-serif, etc.)
 2) Font Size (dropdown options: 10, 11, 12, 1, 0.8, 100, 80, etc.)
 3) Font Unit (dropdown options: Pt, Px, Em, %)

For example, the user could bring up the message compose window, and set the "Font Name" to "Arial", set the "Font Size" to "10", and the "Font Unit" to "Pt". Thunderbird would use this information to set the "font style" HTML code. Other examples and options:

 <font style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> ... </font>
 <font style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16px;"> ... </font>
 <font style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> ... </font>
 <font style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 80%;"> ... </font>

Also allow the user to set default preferences for the desired "Font Name", "Font Size", and "Font Unit".

Note: Some of this functionality can be achieved by using the Thunderbird Stationery Extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4394

New Feature: Redirect

Please add Redirect as a command from the Message menu (allowing users to forward a message in a way that shows the original sender as the sender). I agree with suggestion to add Redirect as a filtering function, as well.

Sort filters alphabetically

Being able to sort by clicking on the "Filter Name" header above the list would be a great help. I have a few hundred filters that I categorize alphabetically, but I have to manually sort them with the "Up" and "Down" buttons.

Filter order

Add more tools to help ordering filters when you have a large number of them. In particular:

 1) arrows, like in evolution, to move a filter to the bottom or top of list
 2) option to have a "mailing-list" flag in filters so these are applied first always.

Allow Subject line to be changed on incoming messages

Allow the user to change (edit/modify) the Subject line of a received e-mail message. This should work for messages in IMAP, POP3, or local folders. The change should also be reflected on the IMAP server message for IMAP accounts. This function would allow the user to change the Subject to something meaningful for storage and later reference.

Support for different set of rules per input folder in Saved Searches

Let's say that I want to keep received and sent mails in different folders (Inbox and Sent, respectively), but I want to have a Saved Search with all the mails sent to or received from an specific person. Currently I can only create one Saved Search which takes data from Inbox and Sent, and apply to them the same rules (in this case, "Sent to that person", and "Received from that person". Unfortunately, in some cases this filters some messages that I don't want (mainly when there are mailing lists involved). It would be desirable to be able to set a different set of rules for each input folder, this is: only "Sent to that person" in "Sent folder", and only "Received from that person" in "Inbox folder", but putting all that messages in the same virtual folder for that Saved Search.

"Grouped by Sort" Starts Open

When using the Grouped by Sort option and sorting by date, every time you re-enter your inbox, you have to reopen the "today" file to see the current emails. That "folder" should remain open so that you don't have to reopen it upon return. This is not a small thing. It is especially annoying because such a problem did not occur in previous versions of Thunderbird.

Automatic Hyperlinking when Creating Messages

When typing a link into an email, it should automatically hyperlink that text when clicking space. There is no need for this to take extra actions.

Enhance Closing A Tabbed Message Window Behaviour

Firstly, when using the new tabbed interface, allow a press of the <ESCAPE> key to close the current message and it's tab, and secondly, amend the checkbox in Options->Reading&Display from "Close Message Window on Delete" to "Close Message Window/Tab on Delete" and allow deleting the current message in a tabbed window to also close that tab if this option is selected.

Add a customizable default option for the column headers of all folders

One should be able to set the order/size/types of column headers for all folders at once (i.e. attachment, from, to, Subject, etc...). This would perhaps only require a customizable default option, which ensure that the layout of all folders are setup at once.

Searching for unread messages

Allow to search for unread messages (e.g. to create a virtual folder with all unread messages). Today it is only allowed to search the messages with the status "answered", "read", "new" or "forwarded" but not with the status "unread".

This functionality can already be achieved by searching for mail where the status "is not" read. (Tested in TB 2.0.0.14)

Use of regular expressions in filters

I've found this function very useful in the old Eudora. Also (or alternatively) some users could find it useful to have boolean connectors for filters with multiple conditions. eg, condition 1 AND condition 2 OR condition 3 instead of the blanket "match all of"/"match any of" radio buttons.

I agree with what was posted below, especially for reply and reply-all.

Something like what is used for inline forwarded message (copied below) would be great!!! I'd be happy if I could set the default reply & reply-all to the format used by forward in-line.

---

Original Message --------

Subject: Original Subject goes here Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2008 12:00:25 -0700 From: Original_sender@hotmail.com To: Original_Recipient@hotmail.com CC: ALL_Those_Originally_CCd@hotmail.com

Thanks.

Add "Junk" button to mark multiple messages as junk

When a single message is selected, a "Junk" button is provided to mark it as junk. This button is not present when multiple messages are selected. This forces the user to bring up the context menu and select "Mark->As Junk". Considering the number of junk messages most people get, this gets old pretty quickly. It's worth it to provide a one-click way to mark multiple messages as junk.

Add "blockquote" creation option in message Reply logic

Thunderbird currently creates the "blockquote" HTML tag on a "Reply" to an email message. Add an option in the UI that will cause Thunderbird to either create or not create the blockquote tag when replying to an email. The option could be in the Compose options and be labeled as "Use blockquote in message reply" with a box to check to create and uncheck to not create. The Thunderbird email reply logic should check this setting and not create the blockquote if the user has the option disabled.

Add a quickreply field beneath each message

To reply for a mail, you have to open a new message window, or a new tab, but it could be easer by adding a quickreply field beneath each message. This GUI option could be very interesting, thinking about displaying the conversation history. I got this idea from iPhones SMS/MMS Messaging Application. For better understanding here is a dummy screenshot:

Search

Select whole thread in searches?

I think that it would be very useful to add a "select the whole thread" as an option in search folders. This will enable to automatically select a whole thread when just one message match (for example "select threads I have contributed to").

I have opened a wish item too: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=447977

R mano

Self-adaptable Search Folders

A Search Folder lose a selected folder when it's renamed. Renaming of a folder shouldn't result in deleting in the selected folder list. The new name should be recogniced and automatically adopted. Also it is bad usability that sub-folders of selected folders weren't added to the list. If you create a new sub-folder of a folder which is already part of one or more Search Folder(s), a prompt should ask the user if the new sub folder can be added to the selected folder list(s). Or a checkbox should be added to the Edit Saved Search Properties: Automatically add sub-folders of selected folders.

Only Involve 'CONTACT' Filter in search

When filtering on the search results page, it would be most helpful to be able to filter messages Only involving a certain contact. At the moment, is is very hard if you want to find a message from a certain contact, who is also part of frequent group emails involving a few contacts. When you select the current option "Must involve CONTACT" it doesn't really reduce the results.

Calendar

Thunderbird/Lightning as Default Application for .ics

In order for Thunderbird (with Lightning) to officially take over as the email client, an essential functionality is to be able to add individual .ics events form the internet to existing calendars.

(Calendar) Reminders stay active until dismissal

Currently, all reminders using lightning disappear after Thunderbird exits and do not return when the program is reopened.

(Calendar) Sync tasks with Google Calendar

The strengths of Lightning and Provider are apparent, but the ability to sync tasks between a Google Calendar and Thunderbird is a noticeable flaw that makes using Thunderbird as full Outlook replacement very difficult.

Layout

Auto View

If the new layout setting "Auto View" has been selected Thunderbird automatically switches between Vertical and Classic View if the window width is to small to display all contents and buttons. Vertical View is a good layout for 16:9 screens but if you reduce the size f.e. to the half of the screen it should change to Classic View.