Press Shift while clicking 'Edit As New Message'.

Note, not everyone is a fan of HTML email.

Note that Shift + click "Edit As New Message" produces the same results as simply clicking "Edit As New Message".

Then may be the message you're trying to edit is plain text.

christ1 said

Then may be the message you're trying to edit is plain text.

That is what I'm guessing. But why would Thunderbird take an email that was created and sent as an HTML email and then when using the "Edit As New Message" option dumb it down to plain text and offer no advanced editing options at all?

I can only assume that the "Edit As New Message" option was never given any ability to edit a message as HTML - hence my question.

Perhaps this should be a feature request.

Well, Shift + 'Edit As New' works here. I'm not sure why it doesn't work for you though.

christ1 said

Well, Shift + 'Edit As New' works here. I'm not sure why it doesn't work for you though.

By Jove, you're right - in part. I've also got Thunderbird installed on my Linux (Ubuntu) machine and simply selecting "Edit As New Message" worked as I expect it to. Note I never had occasion to do this before on that machine.

Meanwhile, "Edit As New Message" has NEVER worked as a full featured editor on my Windows 7 machine - and that includes going back quite a few versions.

So now my question is this: is there something in the configuration of Thunderbird on WIndows that is causing this non-desired behavior?

Works fine here with both, Linux and Windows. Try to start Thunderbird in safe mode and see if that makes any difference. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird

christ1 said

Works fine here with both, Linux and Windows. Try to start Thunderbird in safe mode and see if that makes any difference. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird

No, no difference. I'll need to do some more digging.

That sounds like an add-on gone bad to me.

I often use "Edit as New Message" to resend emails out to other clients as it allows me to very easily just change a few words.

Holding down shift while choosing the option doesn't fix the issue.

I do believe I have found a work around though. But I cannot remember how it was setup before I started playing with this option. But this is what I did.

I played around with the "Send messages as plain text if possible" option which can be found here: Tools/Options/Composition/General/Send Options

I currently have it set to "Send the message in both plain text and HTML" I thought that's where it was, so if that's where yours is, change it to another option, try disabling & re-enabling and you should be able to get it to work.

I'm sorry I didn't pay more attention to the "default" setting or exactly what I did, but that was the section I played with and now my Edit as new message's are in HTML & look correctly formatted.

This has bugged me for the last 1.5 years but I only got around to looking into it now, wow, was I lazy!

I hope this helps!

RFick73 said

I often use "Edit as New Message" to resend emails out to other clients as it allows me to very easily just change a few words. Holding down shift while choosing the option doesn't fix the issue. I do believe I have found a work around though. But I cannot remember how it was setup before I started playing with this option. But this is what I did. I played around with the "Send messages as plain text if possible" option which can be found here: Tools/Options/Composition/General/Send Options I currently have it set to "Send the message in both plain text and HTML" I thought that's where it was, so if that's where yours is, change it to another option, try disabling & re-enabling and you should be able to get it to work. I'm sorry I didn't pay more attention to the "default" setting or exactly what I did, but that was the section I played with and now my Edit as new message's are in HTML & look correctly formatted. This has bugged me for the last 1.5 years but I only got around to looking into it now, wow, was I lazy! I hope this helps!

have your tried running in safe mode to disable add-ons. hold SHift while starting Thunderbird and continue in safe mode when prompted.

I had not tried that before finding my workaround.