Composing messages in Thunderbird: layout question

Oct 05, 2012 22 Replies

When I am composing an e-mail message in Thunderbird, the individual lines of text occupy about half the screen width, but when I receive messages, even ones I've composed and sent to myself when checking layout, they display on the full width of the screen. In many cases this isn't a problem, but if I do some cutting and pasting, importing text from elsewhere, or re-wrapping when composing a message, it can end up after it's been sent with some sentences or sections occupying half the screen width and others the full width, which must be irritating for the recipient in trying to read or print it.



How do I set the line-length when composing so that under any circumstance it will display over the full width of the screen, so that what I type, irrespective of cuts, pastes, re-wraps etc, appear the same as what I or others receive. I've gone through the tools-options menu and the tools-account setting, but can see no reference to setting line length for message composition.


edit->Preferences->composition->wrap plain text messages [72]

Also useful when replying to badly wrapped messages, ctrl-A followed by ctrl-R

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8=E4=B8=8B=E5=8D=884=E6=97=B624=E5=88=8624=E7=A7=92=EF=BC=8CChris Hogg=E5= =86=99=E9=81=93=EF=BC=9A

formatting link

Thanks for the quick reply. That's just the sort of command I've been looking for, but I must be missing something because I can find no such sequence under edit, nor under tools->options->composition, nor tools->options->display, nor under tools->account settings. Under edit I have select all (ctrl+A) and rewrap (ctrl+R), as AB points out, but nothing about setting the screen width in the way you describe. I must be doing something wrong, but what? Is it something to do with plain text messages, but AFAIK I only send in plain text anyway (tools->account settings->composition and addressing->compose messages in HTML format, box is unchecked)?

Have not looked properly, but I concur with you. TB 12.0.1. Recently installed. Got sick of Opera for news. Used to use X-news and TB in the past so fairly familiar.

Something I have only noticed recently, there are 3 options on replying to a message, Reply, Followup and Forward. I can only remember in the past Reply, which I always used, now that writes to the person who sent the message whereas Followup writes to the newsgroup, the result is that several times I have pressed the wrong button, luckily most peeps have a false email address, so I just get a delivery fail message, but a couple of times it has landed in the previous writers letter box, and upset them!

Can't see that in ver. 15.0.1

That's ThunderTurd for you.

MBQ

Ah. I was going by my version witch is rather old and for linux

Ooops yes it all became 'spanner only' in turd 3.0 and up

here's a 3 years old answer that may work ========================================

Tools => Options => General Tab => Advanced Configuration - Config Editor => (and go down to find) Mailnews.wraplength

you can change the setting to 80 or 90 or whatever you want the wrap to occur at. Try that and see how that works for you. ===================================================================

Ah, that's it, (but leaving out the General Tab stage and just going to the Config Editor in the Advanced Configurations).

Thank you very much!

If you have cut and pasted there may be end-of-line markup hidden at the end of the short lines.

Jonathan

That is certainly the case, but I'm hoping that there will be fewer of them if the line length in the 'compose' window is nearly full screen width.

No Advanced Configuration in my version.

Tools > Options > General > Config editor?

In message , Broadback writes

Identical to Turnpike - and identical actions.

In version 15.0.1 Tools => Options => Advanced => General Tab. Click on the 'Config Editor' button in the Advanced Configuration box. Pass over the 'here be dragons' warning and search for Mailnews.wraplength

Not this version! I get Reply, Forward and Archive,

yeah. They keep changing te menu system

There's a sort of registry like set of configurable options that they don't provide GUI access to - you have to edit lines onscreen

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