Hmm, I have it on my windows version. Please try safe mode (hold shift while starting Thunderbird) and see if there is a theme or add-on at work here.

Thanks for the reply. I started it in safe mode using this command:

/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -safe-mode

Now the button is still missing (see link), though the blank bar where I thought it should be is also now gone. Is this a clue?

http://laps.noaa.gov/scratch/tbird_safe.png

I see that where you could see this option it was an email account, and where you couldn't it was a news account. Is this also the case for your OP?

News is different to mail; I believe you can't just poke unrelated messages into a news view. In a newsgroup, your replies to the list will appear when accepted and inserted by the news server.

I am wondering why you consider it useful to be using user-defined Sent folders. These wouldn't work with, for instance, Unified Folders view, unless you go out of your way to designate them as "Sent" type folders.

This is a bit of an unusual setup. I'm using Thunderbird with just outgoing email and no incoming email server. It still required that I set up some type of account though, and I had set up a news account.

I like the option to save replies in the same subfolder that I'm reading the message in to help keep my subfolders organized.

All of my "proper" email accounts have this option. Local Folders and news accounts don't have it. I just checked in Thunderbird using Safe Mode to be sure there weren't any add-ons affecting it.

Looking at this option, I am asking myself why I thought I needed the "Copy Sent To Current" add-on, which offers an explicit query at the point of sending a message about where to file the local copy. Maybe the lack of the option in Local Folders was my motivation. Whatever, you may find this add-on useful too.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/copy-sent-to-current/

I'm puzzled about where these folders are that you want to save sent messages to, given that you don't have any incoming mail. ;-)

Thanks for the replies Zenos. It's conceivable that my setup of having just outgoing mail connected could cause the missing button, though I'm not yet convinced of it. The 'copy-sent-to current' add-on is something I could consider if it has the query option and it works in local folders. Does it work for replies, or just for a newly composed message?

I am handling incoming email by the use of 'procmail' and 'fetchmail'. These utilities have nice filters and after going through the filter the messages are saved in a folder than can easily be read by Thunderbird. When reading incoming messages in Thunderbird I typically sort them into subfolders for further consideration.

Thus I have two questions at this point. Can someone verify that the "Place replies in the folder of the message being replied to" button does work in a recent version of OS X (e.g. Mavericks or Sierra)? Secondly, if I do need to set up the incoming email account in Thunderbird is there a way to render this inactive so I can continue to separately use 'procmail/fetchmail'?

The add-on works for all sent email messages. You get the option to set it individually for each account.

I can't answer for OSX - I don't use it.

scalers said

Thanks for the replies Zenos. It's conceivable that my setup of having just outgoing mail connected could cause the missing button, though I'm not yet convinced of it.

I am. How can Thunderbird place mail in an account folder if you have no account (local folders is a special account and really does not count here I think.)