268665 - TB always starts with HTML email even when setting say the contrary

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[nicolas chevreux]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When clicking on an email address in another applications, the compose window
opened by Thunderbird is always in HTML, even when TB has been configured to
send only plain text messages

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Configure your TB account to send only plain text messages
2. open any application other than TB. It can be Firefox, Word or anything
containing hyperlinks.
3. click on an email hyperlink

Actual Results:  
The compose window is the HTML one. One has to go to option -> format -> plain
text only to compose a plain text message.

Expected Results:  
Open a compose window without the HTML formatting options, and have the email
automaticall composed in plain text.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #0)
> 1. Configure your TB account to send only plain text messages

What settings, exactly, do you mean by this?


Do you have multiple mail accounts, or just the one?

Comment 2

[nicolas chevreux]

(In reply to comment #1)
> What settings, exactly, do you mean by this?

Account Settings -> account name -> Composition & Addressing -> "Compose
messages in HTML format" is not checked

Options -> Composition -> Send Options -> "Text format" is set to "Convert the
message to plain text"

Generally speaking, if I click on "New email", I don't get all the HTML
formatting options and I do not have the "Format" menu in the menu bar. If I
click on a link in another applications (for example on your email address in
this page, seen with FF 1.0), I get a "Format" menu and a whole lot of unwanted
HTML options

> Do you have multiple mail accounts, or just the one?

5 POP accounts, using global inbox. All the accounts are configured in the same way.

Comment 3

[nicolas chevreux]

Just tried to hit shift+click on an email address in Firefox, and this also
didn't give me a new email in text format, but in HTML one.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Just tried to hit shift+click on an email address in Firefox, and this also
> didn't give me a new email in text format, but in HTML one.

The shift only works for clicks on the TB toolbar buttons Write (New message), 
Reply, and Reply All; also Forward unless your preference is set to forward 
inline (bug 254931).

When an external program starts a TB mail composition, it will always pick the 
"default" account; and a new composition started for that account should always 
follow the Account Setting "Compose in HTML" for that account (or, more 
precisely, for the default identity of that account).  (The default account's 
name is shown in boldface in the left-hand "tree" panel of the Account Settings 
window.  This can be changed by selecting another account in that tree and 
clicking the "Set as Default" button below the tree.)

I cannot explain why you are not seeing this behavior.

(Which version of TB are you using?)

Comment 5

[nicolas chevreux]

> When an external program starts a TB mail composition, it will always pick the 
> "default" account

Ok, found my problem, then: for some reason (and certainly not because I wanted
it to be this way), my default account was the "news and blog" (RSS) one. And
since you can't compose emails with this account, I was getting a HTML compose
window when clicking on a link.
Solved, but weird that this account was the default one.

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #5)
> my default account was the "news and blog" (RSS) one. [...]
> Solved, but weird that this account was the default one.

That *is* weird!  Did you create that account before any of the mail accounts?

Comment 7

[nicolas chevreux]

(In reply to comment #6)
> That *is* weird!  Did you create that account before any of the mail accounts?

No. Which is weird, since it is usually not possible to set up "News and blogs"
as a default account.

Comment 8

[Tom Metro]

I observed this same behavior, and fortunately the clues in this bug report led
me to the solution.

I recently installed:

Folderpane Tools 0.0.1
http://www.chuonthis.com/extensions/folderpane.php

which allows you to select any of the accounts as the default account. I had
selected "Local Folders."

I'll pass on a note to the author of that extension to see if the problem can be
worked around, or at least give users a warning.