Sunday 29 July 2007

Lost Sidebar in Thunderbird (folders & calendar)

While using Thunderbird, I clicked on the left somewhere, and all of a sudden my folders and my mini-calendar were gone. What happened? I attempted to click and drag on the very left edge where the edge of the window was, but that didn't work.

Tried all the options in the view menu, looked for other menus. Nothing.

Googled it, and came up with nothing.

Went back into Thunderbird, tried again. This time, it worked. My folder list and calendar re-appeared.

BFI sometimes works. You just have to try harder.

The reason this happened is that the resize is "sticky". You can make the width of the folders panel smaller to a certain point, then BANG, it's gone. The same goes for resizing it from nothing to something. If you only drag the mouse a small distance, the folder frame will not resize. If you drag it to a certain width, then the folder pane will pop back up.

13 comments:

toastie said...

Thank you. Thought I was gonna have to switch back to Outlook, which would've ruined my day.

uniquegeek said...

Thanks for letting me know you were able to find this and use it!

Anonymous said...

It keeps happening to me in the Mac version, and I have to keep trying to grab the tiny sliding edge of the pane for an hour sometimes. There should be a toggle somewhere to force it to come back, or to prevent it from completely disappearing. It collapses without warning at times and is so hard to get back!

Anonymous said...

Hey, I just found a good solution for the lost folder pane problem. Though the side bar to expand the pane is ungrabbable, I realized from reading this thread

http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t10082-missing-folders-pane-in-thunderbird.html

that the Nostalgy extension toggles the pane on and off. Whoops! So, just pressing the "L" key (lower case) toggled it back.

uniquegeek said...

That's the most frustrating thing about problems like these. It's a huge pain when it isn't working, yet you know there is only a teeny tiny little menu item, checkbox, or keystroke *somewhere* to fix it! Simple fix, but huge PITA.

Unknown said...

> that the Nostalgy extension
> toggles the pane on and off.
> Whoops! So, just pressing the "L"
> key (lower case) toggled it back.

THANK YOU!

Pop Culture Blog said...

Thank goodness you posted this info. Like Toastie said, I was running out of options other than a reinstall or switching to something else. And it was such an easy fix (dragging) that I feel like a lunkhead for getting so worked up about it. Well done, sir.

kh said...

another satisfied customer here...was on the verge of switching Mail apps...hm...I wonder if Nostalgy has been quite as useful as I'd hoped, maybe it's time to axe the damn thing...

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much. I have spent the better part of the day trying to recover my folders. You're a lifesaver.

Anonymous said...

Thanks! I didn't know about the lowercase 'l' either and was very frustrated!!!

Ana said...

Thank you! Thank you! I was going crazy trying to figure out what had happened! Just dragging the edge fixed it. (Lower case l did not work).

bruce said...

Re disappearing Thunderbird sidebar folder pane - my problem is somewhat different and it suddenly happened out of the blue.
When I log onto Thunderbird, all is well with the folder sidebar pane present, but only for about one second when it diasppears completely.
In spite of all efforts with the mouse, I am unable to restore it.
Any suggestions on why this has happened and on how to restore the sidepane would be appreciated.

uniquegeek said...

I don't have an email or link for you Bruce, so I'll post here: Have you tried the "L" key on the keyboard? Other users have suggested it's a "Nostalgy keyboard shortcut that hides the folders panel."

There is a minute possibility it is the "L" key itself... and the keyboard is physically sticky. Can you try a different keyboard, or maybe gently pry off the key and giving it a cleaning with rubbing alcohol? Try rebooting and replugging in the keyboard before startup? Maybe you have other software running on your machine that is sending keystrokes (on screen keyboard or something else)?

The other suggestion I would have is poking around in the Thunderbird config file (though save a backup first). However, if it's at this point, I'd look on the Thunderbird site and consider filing a bug report if you can't find any history of this in their help forum or archives.