Thunderbird - Mark Emails Unread

Installed Thunderbird yesterday and testing it at the moment. One
thing that bugs me is that it automatically marks an email as Read as
soon as it is clicked on, even when it hasn't been opened and read. I
can't see a setting for it to keep emails Unread until they are
actually opened.

Can anyone help me sort this problem out please.

Thanks.

 

Try using or changing the "Mark message read ..." setting in Tools >
Options > Advanced > General Settings.

 

Thanks for your reply.

I've tried that already last night and it doesn't work. The option it
gives in there is to mark messages read after the number of seconds
you specify, default is 5 seconds.

If I untick that box it still marks the message read the moment the
message is selected, but not opened. What I have just noticed is that
if the message preview pane is switched off then it does exactly as I
want it to and not mark the message read. Unfortunately that defeats
the purpose of a preview pane.

 

If the message preview pane is open when you select a message, you are
opening it. It doesn't matter whether you read it or not.

 

Unfortunately, it's going to be this poorly designed preview option
that is going to stop me from using Thunderbird an email and
newsreader. I wanted to use Thunderbird for a specific mail account.

Outlook 2003, Agent 2 and other mail and newsgroup reader
applications I use provide preview options without having to mark
messages as read.

Pity really since I've always been a Netscape and Mozilla user.

 

That's always bothered me too. I'd like to see: left click selects
and opens, middle click selects but does not open.

-- Wayne.

 

In the version of Thunderbird that I have (version 1.0.5 (20050711),
the emails or Usenet posts do not show as read until clicked on.
They will sit there all day and night as unread until I click on
them. The time delay after clicking on a header can be run up to 999
sec. I only tested to 120 sec. and it worked. You say it
automatically marks an email as Read as soon as it is clicked on,
even when it hasn't been opened and read. *When you click on a
header that is exactly what you are doing. Opening the email weather
you read it or not.* Good luck in any event.

 

Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated.

As I said I installed and downloaded it last night so I'm using the
most current version. Not sure what version number it is without
looking.

As far as the preview option goes, I understand that some of the
message as to be technically opened to provide the preview. What I'm
specifically saying is that the actual message header in the Inbox
should not change to 'Read' while being previewed. It should only
change to 'Read' when the message is opened in its own Window or
marked as 'Read' when specified by the user.

Other applications I use manage this perfectly without any problem.
They even have options to allow this. It's just a pity that
Thunderbird doesn't do it. I was expecting it to have a much better
user interface then Outlook Express as the minimum.

I don't usually use the preview options for valid security reasons,
but I will need to use from time to time for one specific account.

 

I understand your description of how you like to work, but that wouldn't
work for me because I /never/ open a message in its own window to read
it. Why bother when it's right there in the preview pane?

Well, sw is a very personal thing. I much prefer Mozilla mail/news
applications over OE.

I'm guessing your reference to security is that you're concerned about
spam emails reporting back to the originator. You can turn off remote
images, javascript, and plugins in mail/news. When the Junk Mail filter
is trained it will catch most (some report near 100%, others less) spam.
The few that get through mine I simply right-click and Mark As Junk.
This does not open the message in the preview pane.

As for the marking as Read, I may scan a message (in the Preview pane)
and decide to come back to it later. In which case I can simply hit "M"
and the "Read" state is toggled back on; easy enough if it's that
important to me. What I also may do is move such messages into a
special folder that I'll check when I have time. In which case I
couldn't care less how they're marked.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://edmullen.net/Mozilla/moz.html
Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice. - George
Jackson

 

Very well said Ed, Thank You

 

I don't use Outlook Express. Just used that as an example as the bare
minimum. I tend to use Agent 2 and Outlook 2003. Both work pretty
well, especially since I have a system in place that cuts out nearly
all spam.

I already do that in my email and news clients, and prefer to send and
recieve text only emails.

I'm not really worried about spam as such. My ISP provides me with
configurable filters at the POP3 server level which I use. I've got
them configured so that they capture and delete pretty much all spam
as soon as they enter the POP3 server. On top of that I only dowload
email headers first for all emails before choosing which emails to
actually download. I've found that the combination of these two
systems pretty much results in no spam entering my computer.

That's a decent enough work around. I guess it comes down to how tou
work and manage your email. In my case I tend to use multiple accounts
and I want to keep the emails for each account in its own specific
folder until I've finalised the emails and archived them.

I'll give Thunderbird a try and see how it goes with one account. The
client itself looks decent enough. I just find it a little
disappointing that a basic option I've used for years in several well
known email and news applications as not been included in Thunderbird.

 

I kind of agree with Zygon on this. Back when I used to have a job, we
used an old commercial mail reader.(I can't remember which one, it might
have been a proprietarty one.) That one allowed you to single click on
an email and you'd get a sample of the message. It didn't open unless
you double clicked on it. If it was spam you could delete it without
opening it all the way. (Kind of like G-mail is now but not exactly.) I
like the junk mail feature on T-bird too, but I'd rather be able to
delete or junk the spam with out opening them. I'd also like to be able
to delete useless NG messages also, like ForteAgent and Newsrover.

Oh well, I guess you can't always get what you want. That applies to
Email clients and women! T-bird is still the best around! IMHO



Tom

 

I have Junk Mail Controls set to send junk mail to the Trash folder when
I click the dot in the junk status column in the headers pane. I don't
need to open the message to do so.

 

It seems rather pointless to discriminate between opening and previewing
a message, since technically in both cases your system is reading the
message. As people who send emals with nasty things in them are likely
to put those in befor the text, harm will result from preview just as
well as from opening.

To be able to take a riskfree look at a suspect mesage, it would be more
useful to have an extension (plus corresponding toolbarbutten) that
opens a message as pure ASCII, without any interpretation of special
characters at all.

--
Vriendelijke groet,
Jan van Aalderen, Amstelveen
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
Wie mijn raad volgt, doet zulks geheel op eigen risico!
Reactie op usenetpostjes in de groep. Email zie ik niet.
*-------------------------------------------------------------*

 

There are two points with the automatic-marked-read feature that make the current behavior - sorry - ugly:

1) I have noticed, that filtering my inbox with filter set to only move read messages to the next folders, when the last message (read) is filtered away, the focus jumps to the second to the last message (now last and previously unread), marks the message as read and filters that away too. Result: emails are cleared from my inbox and I have not had more than 0.1 s to read them. In fact, I might not even have had enough time to realize where to go look for them.
I am wondering how many emails have gone lost...

2) There are so many reasons that a user might not have really read the message (small preview window, filtering as above, etc.) that it seems quite difficult to have a program decide for me if something has been read or not.

Therefore, although other users might want the automatic mark-read, it does not work for me. All we are asking for is the option to switch something off!