I had a similar issue after installing an add-on that altered the make-up of the accounts settings page.

The author of the addon provided me with this code to put into userChrome.css:

#accountManager {
  min-height: 52em !important;
} 

You may need to fiddle with the "52em" to make it suit your needs.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css&printable=yes

I am not this technically adept.

If you provide me with an email address, I could send you an example of the userChrome.css file.

Would you feel able to find your profile, create the chrome folder and paste in a file sent as an attachment?

xenos at gmx dot co dot uk

I would like to try. Give me a little direction on how to find the profile and I think I can do it.

My email:

Many thanks for your help

Bernie Gowen

OK, let's start with this article and see how far it takes you:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb

The section named "How to find your profile" gives the easiest way to find your profile.

Once there, you'll almost certainly need to make a folder or directory named chrome - it usually needs to be created by the user, as it is not installed or needed in the default installation.

Make this folder, copy the file I sent to you into it. Restart Thunderbird.

You haven't told us your screen size. Here on a 1366 x 768 display, on a not very high spec widescreen laptop, the 52em was just about right.

You can open the userChrome.css file in notepad to edit it. Just take care to change only this number and nothing else, and save it as a text file if it asks you for a type. Watch out for it "helpfully" adding something like .txt to the end of the name - you don't need this. The file's proper name is userChrome.css and the mix of lowercase and uppercase is intentional and essential.

"em" is a value relating to the size of fonts on your screen, so "52em" equates to the height of 52 lines of text. If your re-sized screen is still too large, or not large enough, you should be able to make a good guess at how much to change it.

I should add that the folder you need to create must be called chrome in lowercase letters.

And you might like to edit your previous reply and remove your email address. I'd expected you to send it to me by email rather posting it in public on the forum.

I will have to take some time to work on this. At least a day or two.

I promise to get back to you on my progress as soon as possible.

Many thanks.

Bernie G

Can't do it. Too old (86). Twenty five years ago I programmed easily. Now, short term memory problems keep tripping me up.

If you could simply tell me how I can completely wipe my existing TBird installation, I am sure I can install a clean version of TBird. I know ThunderBird makes it easy to install.

I really do appreciate your help. Bernie G

What advantage or benefit do you expect from reinstalling? I don't expect it to fix the problem with the size of the pane.

For a clean start you'd need to remove your "profile" which would wipe all your existing email accounts AND the messages in them AND your Address Book. Do you really want all that hassle?