I suggest you try using a theme.https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/complete-themes/ That is what most folk do when they don't like the defaults.

Thanks Matt. It is a long winded solution though as you have to try and see examples of what is on offer and download and install before you can see what you are getting. Also I have found that some platforms only work with Windows (whatever that is? lol). I have installed Walnut and Noia for now to have a look but it would be far better if Mozilla actually stopped creating naff interfaces and had coloured icons in the toolbox to implement instead of relying on others to do it for them. One also has to download an add-on for altering the text sizeI of Thunderbird, which is ridiculous. I am grateful for your suggestion.

As Thunderbird has no employees nor for that matter development from Mozilla I think you expect6ation of Mozilla will not materialize.

Thunderbird is a community project that for the time being is under the Mozilla umbrella. But they really want us out I think., their latest sally is they no longer accept the responsibility to fix what they break in Thunderbird with their changes for Firefox. your will notice the pace of change in Thunderbird slowed dramatically a couple of years ado, when we got off the Mozilla release merry go round.. Unfortunately we still depend on the Geko rendering engine so now there is less time to fix Thunderbird because what volunteers we have are spending more time fixing breakages caused by Geko changes.

One has to wonder why Mozilla (as, with all developers) make changes all the time when they are not necessarily needed? It's a neurosis, and then the admin on anything that you create becomes a bigger burden than the thing that you actually started which companies should have realised many years ago as, it is blindingly obvious. Mozilla should make their mind up what they are actually doing, instead of compromising what they started.