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{ 2007 04 05 }

Keeping threaded view in Thunderbird

Users of Mozilla Thunderbird, may have noticed that if you are viewing messages in threaded view, clicking on a column name (other than the thread column) will turn off threaded view.

What if you want to keep threaded view on? Go to Tools–>Options–>Advanced–>General, and click on “Config Editor“.
In the Config Editor, search for the preference mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads. Double-click on it, which should change the value to false.
That’s it. :)

Posted by Chris Ilias on Thursday, April 5, 2007, at 6:05 pm. Filed under Mozilla, Thunderbird. Follow any responses to this post with its comments RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

{ 14 } Comments

  1. Jason | April 5, 2007 at 7:47 pm | Permalink

    This is a great tip — I accidentally do this often!

    However, it doesn’t appear to work in the TB 2.x bleeding edge build that I use. Have something changed that would break this?
    Jason

  2. localhost | April 6, 2007 at 6:17 am | Permalink

    Why is it needed to remove this feature by default? I love this one.

  3. Bram | April 6, 2007 at 7:11 am | Permalink

    Indeed, as localhost says, why not have this feature on by default? At this point, the default behaviour is confusing…

  4. michael schurter | April 11, 2007 at 1:35 pm | Permalink

    There’s a fix for this?! Thank you thank you thank you thank you.

    I had just given up on being able to easily sort my mail!

    Please please please please turn this off by default!

  5. kwc | May 10, 2007 at 7:32 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for digging this up. You inspired me to dig up the preference key for changing the default sort order for dates to be reverse chronological, though unfortunately it only helps with new folders. So I almost have all my Tbird headaches cured.

    http://kwc.org/blog/archives/2007/2007-05-10.fix_for_my_1_thunderbird_headaches.html

  6. Matt Dell | May 10, 2007 at 11:17 pm | Permalink

    Hi I am using the release candidate 2.0 (2.0.20070326)
    Doesn’t seem to work for me either
    Any thoughts?
    Came here via Lifehacker btw
    :)

  7. namit | May 11, 2007 at 3:16 am | Permalink

    Yes i am using 2.0 with Imap also and it does not work for me.

  8. Rory McCann | May 11, 2007 at 11:00 am | Permalink

    Cool, thanks a million, that had annoyed me so much. :)

  9. Narcélio Filho | May 11, 2007 at 7:33 pm | Permalink

    Great! Thank you very much!

  10. Tina | May 31, 2007 at 11:17 am | Permalink

    In the Mac version, there is no Tools -> Options menu, and Thunderbird -> Preferences -> General -> Advanced doesn’t offer a Config editor. Any advice?

  11. Keith | December 3, 2007 at 12:57 pm | Permalink

    So, there is an easy solution for TBird 2. Simply click the leftmost column header, which is (as if by magic) “click to display message threads”.

    Viola! your threads are restored.

  12. Paul | March 2, 2008 at 12:08 am | Permalink

    Since you’re so smart (honestly, this is amazing!), do you know how to show more than 7 levels of threading?

  13. Chris | December 6, 2008 at 11:37 am | Permalink

    Thanks for the tip regarding Thunderbird 2.0

  14. Ignacio Capurro | June 25, 2009 at 8:51 am | Permalink

    You have to use plugins in thunderbird 2.x
    Here is one of them.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/thunderbird/addon/9743

{ 9 } Trackbacks

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    [...] but this quick tweak takes care of a major Thunderbird annoyance. Thanks Ben! — Adam Pash Keeping threaded view in Thunderbird [Chris Ilias’ [...]

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