Can I stop Thunderbird from decrypting every email in a thread when multiple encypted emails are being shown in preview form? It's a horrible slow down.
I know I can stop using threads but I don't want to. I'd prefer that Thunderbird doesn't try to decrypt an email until it is the only email being displayed. If that's too hard then not decrypting until it is displayed in a new window would be preferable. Every time I collapse a thread or accidentally click on the thread subject of a collapsed thread instead of the expand thread arrow I have to either wait for Thunderbird to decrypt every email in the thread or else yank the card containing my cert. (At least that doesn't crash Thunderbird.)
Chosen solution
You can toggle the pref mail.operate_on_msgs_in_collapsed_threads to false. That way threads aren't shown in the multimessage preview pane anymore. Only when you select a single message the message is shown.
Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General -> Config Editor -> (I'll be careful) and search for that preference.
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I can't follow what you're doing. Can you describe every step in detail? A screenshot may help as well. http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem
Ok, I'll strip out unneeded information and use screenshots. I have a physical card with identity/encryption/etc. certificates on it like this one. It gets inserted in a card reader on my computer. I'm not sure if this is relevant but it means the certs are not installed on the computer and therefore may be part of the problem.
If I click on the subject "Home safe" in this picture and the thread contains encrypted messages, Thunderbird will chug away until it has decrypted every encrypted mail in the thread and can display previews of all of them in the pane at the bottom of the picture. When there are a lot of encrypted messages this takes a long time. I'm looking for a way to stop Thunderbird from decrypting every message in a thread just to show a preview like is seen at the bottom of the 2nd screenshot. However I don't want to eliminate the message pane altogether. And I like previews of unencrypted emails if I can get them but am willing to sacrifice them if that's the only way to avoid the lengthy times TB spends decrypting.
Please expand the thread by clicking on the little triangle left of "Home safe" in your screenshot. When you click on a single message in the thread, do you still see the lag? I guess it isn't necessary to open all messages in the thread simultaneously.
The problem is that it is possible to "miss" the little triangle by a few pixels and get the subject instead. Then I'm stuck waiting for TB to decrypt the entire thread or I have to yank the cert card to make it stop.
If I click on a single encrypted message then the lag is much shorter since TB is only decrypting a single message. It's a fraction of a second in this case.
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You can toggle the pref mail.operate_on_msgs_in_collapsed_threads to false. That way threads aren't shown in the multimessage preview pane anymore. Only when you select a single message the message is shown.
Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General -> Config Editor -> (I'll be careful) and search for that preference.
Thanks Onno! Now TB shows/decrypts only the first message in a collapsed thread in the preview pane and that works for me.