If you use Thunderbird and is a keyboard-heavy user (like me), as opposed to mouse-heavy, then you’d like to know about Thunderbird keyboard shortcuts. I’ve been particularly interested in "Move to Search Bar" which takes you to the search box on top-right corner of Thunderbird. It can be accessed by "Ctrl + K". In Firefox, I’ve been using Ctrl+E for this functionality but that means "Edit as New" in Thunderbird. I immediately tried "Ctrl+K" in Firefox and that of course took me to the search bar as well.
Other than that, I already use the following shortcuts in Thunderbird:
New Message: Ctrl + M
Send Message Now: Ctrl + Enter
Reply to Message: Ctrl + R
Reply to All in Message: Ctrl + Shift + R
Increase/Decrease Font size: Ctrl +/-
Get New Message for Current Account: Ctrl+T
Save Message As File: Ctrl+S
Some more shortcuts I learned are:
Move to next mail Pane: F6
Toggle Message Pane: F8
Then there are other fairly intuitive shortcuts. The only other shortcut that I’m missing now is "Change the Search Criteria" in Search Bar. Does anybody know ? Even Firefox does not have this shortcut.
"Move to Search Bar" is my most favorite and heavily used feature in Thunderbird and Firefox. What is yours ?
Technorati: thunderbird keyboardshortcuts firefox
Thanks! I’m a new Thunderbird user myself so these are really helpful for me!
Comment by melanie gao — February 24, 2007 @ 4:14 pm
Melanie, glad you find it helpful. Do let us know what’s your favorite shortcut.
Comment by Arun — February 24, 2007 @ 5:13 pm
On Windows, Alt+down (or up) arrow opens the search criteria drop-down when the focus is in the search bar. Escape closes it. That at least makes it possible to set the criteria using only the keyboard, though it takes a few strokes to do it.
Comment by muv — February 26, 2007 @ 2:44 pm
muv, that worked for both Thunderbird and Firefox.
thanks a lot!
Comment by Arun — February 26, 2007 @ 6:38 pm
The space bar is where it’s at!
1. Use it to move to next unread in a folder.
2. Open a message and it will scroll to the bottom of the message, then open the next unread.
Most of the time I read all of my mail and feeds with this single key.
Best,
David
Comment by david folk — February 27, 2007 @ 9:28 am
I’ve just accidentally discovered that ctrl-down takes you from thuderbird to the lightning calendar, which I’ve been trying to find for ages and does not seem to be on the mozilla page you posted. The trouble is I cannot find a shortcut to take you back to mail!
Comment by Chris — April 9, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
In Thunderbird with Lightning installed you can use CTRL-1 to see mail, CTRL-2 for address book, CTRL-3 for the calendar, and CTRL-4 to go to your task list. The ctrl-down shortcut key seems unintentional and will hopefully be removed. It is preventing me from using the keyboard to ctrl select multiple items while going down a list of emails.
Comment by dan — April 15, 2008 @ 10:13 am
For some reason Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- done work for me from the keyboard. They do under Text Size from the View menu. And the two little icons on my status bar (Text Size extension) work, they they are not really "quick zoom" compared to keyboard shortcuts.
Can you tell me why I might have lost this capability? What’s the easiest way to restore it? Should I reinstal Thunderbird, or would it continue with the same settings?
Comment by Bill — July 26, 2008 @ 9:31 am
Hello:
It appears I’ve solved my own problem. I tried everything dealing with menus and the Options. Finally, I began to wonder whether any or some of the extensions I installed could have had an adverse effect. Well, I got rid of a couple that didn’t seem to work, and a few I would probably never use. I can’t tell which one or ones did the trick, but I got my Ctrl++ and Ctrl+O- back. So, it’s apparent to me that the extensions could be a fertile ground when looking for the source of a problem
Comment by BILL BAYES — July 28, 2008 @ 11:50 am
I just got stung by the <Ctrl-Down> change (Ctrl-Up still works!). You can change the (“go to today”) mapping with the keyconfig extention (I’ve set it to <Alt-Home>).
Comment by Neil — December 5, 2008 @ 3:40 am
I am searching howto access search type (subjetc/sender/full) in the search bar of Thunderbird.
(it is for a blind user, sometimes the type change, I don’t know how?)
And also do anyone knows how it is stored?
best regards
PO.
Comment by flavigny — January 1, 2010 @ 9:05 am
OMG! The ctrl-down issue. How stupid is that? ctrl-down is universal for allowing multiple select across applications (in windows). But t-bird chooses to use it to…activate lightning… arrrghhhh… Any keyboard user would know better…
The question is: How do I get rid of it?
Comment by mawi — June 1, 2010 @ 1:19 pm