Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's Couple of questions for Thunderbird users

I have a couple of things I want to fix/change in Thunderbird, but after a lot of searching I can't find a way to do them.

First thing is that, every so often, Thunderbird starts listing email sent and received by the time and not the date they were sent out/received. It seems to do this entirely of its own accord and then, just as suddenly, it reverts to using date again. It's not a great problem, but I'd like to make it use date all the time if that's possible. Anyone had a similar problem and know how to fix this?

Secondly, when I send out an email with an attachment, Thunderbird also puts the text of the attachment in the body of the email. Anyone know of a way to stop it doing this?

Oh, and if anyone knows how to set up an email sig, that would be handy too.

Thanks!

LabRat

I don't use Thunderbird, but I did have an old copy lying around on my HDD. It's version 0.9, so I'm not sure if things are different for you.

The date/time thing sounds very wierd. It may be a glitch in the program. Perhaps you should try getting a newer (or older) version of the program.

The only other thing I can think of is that maybe you're accidentally clicking one of the little "sort by" buttons when you move the mouse around from message to message. I know I've had that problem with a few different programs. It's a little worse for me because I use a touchpad (and thus can accidentally click a lot more easily than with a regular mouse), but it's always possible that something like that is happening. Given the fact that I don't see a "sort by time" option (and the fact that putting one in really makes no sense), I have a feeling it's more likely to simply be a glitch.

The signature, I can help with. In version 0.9, you can add a signature by going to Tools -> Account Options. In the general options page (first menu item below your username), there's a little checkbox that says something like "Attach this signature to outgoing messages," and a text box below it for you to enter you sig. Unfortunately, it does not appear to support multiple sigs for a single user.

Not sure what to tell you about the attachment thing. I checked with version 0.9, and it didn't do that at all. I know I did have that problem with AOL, back when we were using them as our ISP. I found that sending multiple attachments helped, as did zipping the text files (so it didn't recognize the file as being text). Not the best option for the EIC of the archive, though. Hmm... Does it make any difference if you tell it to search for "All Files" rather than "Text Files" when attaching? Take a poke at the options and account options. I don't see anything in version 0.9, but they may have added something. The only other thing I can suggest is, once again, to try to find a different version.

(You can find all available versions here. )

Oh, one more thought... Maybe there's a Thunderbird Extension which will help?

Paul

Thanks, Paul.

I had the same thoughts as you re the weird time/date switching thing. But, again like you, I couldn't see any option to sort by time, so I think I agree, a glitch might be the problem.

On the signature thing - I did find what looks to be the option for putting one on. It's in Tools/Accounts/Composing and Addressing/'place my signature here' - but that last option is greyed out and inaccessible.

Which is making me wonder even more if I have a glitched copy and that my problems may all be solved by simply reinstalling a new version of the program.

The attachment thing has become more of a real problem than just an irksome glitch, as I've begun to realise from responses I've received from those I've sent attachments to that not only is the attached file also being copied as text in the body of the email, but that often the attachment itself isn't even showing up for those receiving the email. Then I get mail asking where the attachment is.

Hopefully this too will be solved by reinstalling.

Thanks for the helpful links, Paul. Much appreciated.

EDIT: Well, I found another option that seems to be about attaching your signature. But when I put in a sig, all I got on my emails were a couple of weird glitched characters. Yup, definitely looking as though I've got a bug-ridden program. <sigh>


LabRat

Just to add, in case anyone else is suffering from these same problems, I found a very helpful support forum Scott\'s Newsletter Forums and got answers for at least two of them so far.

The date/time thing - apparently this is a feature of Thunderbird. It puts the time next to sent/recevied email for the current day. Then when that day passes it changes it to the date.

The sig thing - apparently you have to type up your sig in notepad, then save the file on your hd. Browse to find the file and attach it to the 'attach your sig' option. Seems a bit convoluted but it got me a sig.

Still trying to figure out that attachments.

LabRat