How can I change the background colour of a reply or forwarded message I am composing?
I have received an HTML-formatted message, which arrived with a red background colour. When I reply or forward that message, the message composition window appears with the same red background colour, and with black text. The resulting black text on a red background is hard to read.
How can I change the background colour of the reply or forwarded message which I am composing? How can I override the background colour set by the sender in the original message?
Note that I am asking about the background colour of a message which was set by the sender. I am not asking about how to set the default colour of messages I compose from scratch. Nor am I asking about how to set the background colour of Thunderbird windows or UI elements.
Thank you in advance.
Chosen solution
@david, I think you have it!
In place of ThunderHTMLedit from the BetterBird site, I installed the HTML Source Editor add-on which I found within the Extensions tab of the Thunderbird Add-ons Manager UI.
Using this, I forwarded the original message in question. Thunderbird opened the forwarded message for me to edit. It had a red background. I pressed the "Source (HTML)" button which now appeared in the top-right corner of the new message's window. A second window, "HTML source", opened. This contained an HTML file of the message I was composing. I searched for "<style>", then "body". I found an entry,
body #bodyTable { background-color: rgb(186, 9, 62); }
This I recognised as a CSS directive to paint a reddish background colour behind both the <body> element and any element with id="bodyTable". I deleted the keyword "body". I pressed the "Save" button in the lower-right corner of the HTML source window. Instantly, the red background colour disappeared from the new message's window.
That is exactly what I wanted to accomplish. Yay!
Note that this sort of editing does require a knowledge of HTML and CSS. The content of the HTML source window is adequately comprehensible given that knowledge, but I can imagine it would be a fearsome tangle without it.
Many thanks to John Bieling for the HTML Source Editor add-on version 1.16.
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I suggest pressing the shift key when you click 'reply' to switch you to plain text for this one message. I think that may eliminate the color issue.
david said
I suggest pressing the shift key when you click 'reply' to switch you to plain text for this one message. I think that may eliminate the color issue.
Thank you for the suggestion. Yes, it eliminates the background colour. Unfortunately, it also eliminates all the HTML formatting of the included message which I am forwarding, or to which I am replying. In some cases this may be fine. In some cases, however, it ruins the included message.
I guess I should clarify my question: How can I change the background colour of my part of the reply or forwarded message which I am composing, without ruining the formatting of the included message? How can I override the background colour set by the sender in the original message, but not discard all HTML formatting?
Other than modifying the HTML (for which, you would need an addon), I suggest writing your reply, and then highlighting the reply, and selecting the background color option in compose menu and set to a different color. If you select a dark color, consider then changing your text to white. I agree, this is messy, and I wish people who send messages in color were sensitive to us, as receivers, who must struggle in our replies.
David: Thank you again for your attention.
I tried what you suggested: writing a reply, highlighting the reply text, and attempting to set the background colour. However, I do not see a "compose" menu in my copy of Thunderbird (115.10.1 (64-bit) on macOS Sonoma 14.7.1).
I do see a "Format" menu. It has a "Text Colour…" item and a "Page Colours and Background…" item. Neither was successful in changing the background of the top part of the reply message, which contains my text.
I have heard that from other Mac users, but I know nothing of Macs. Were you able to change the text color? That may help. Otherwise, you may be forced to use HTML within the message. There is an excellent addon for that at https://betterbird.eu/addons/index.html - but you need to know HTML to use it.
Chosen Solution
@david, I think you have it!
In place of ThunderHTMLedit from the BetterBird site, I installed the HTML Source Editor add-on which I found within the Extensions tab of the Thunderbird Add-ons Manager UI.
Using this, I forwarded the original message in question. Thunderbird opened the forwarded message for me to edit. It had a red background. I pressed the "Source (HTML)" button which now appeared in the top-right corner of the new message's window. A second window, "HTML source", opened. This contained an HTML file of the message I was composing. I searched for "<style>", then "body". I found an entry,
body #bodyTable { background-color: rgb(186, 9, 62); }
This I recognised as a CSS directive to paint a reddish background colour behind both the <body> element and any element with id="bodyTable". I deleted the keyword "body". I pressed the "Save" button in the lower-right corner of the HTML source window. Instantly, the red background colour disappeared from the new message's window.
That is exactly what I wanted to accomplish. Yay!
Note that this sort of editing does require a knowledge of HTML and CSS. The content of the HTML source window is adequately comprehensible given that knowledge, but I can imagine it would be a fearsome tangle without it.
Many thanks to John Bieling for the HTML Source Editor add-on version 1.16.
david said
…Were you able to change the text color? That may help.…
Thank you for this suggestion, David. I did change the text colour, to a light grey which contrasted nicely with the dark red background. However, some of the people to whom I sent the forwarded message saw the dark red background, while others (I think a Gmail reader in particular) saw a white background. The light grey text was difficult to read against the white background.
Thus I think editing the HTML to solve the background colour problem was a better approach than changing the text colour.
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