If you are like me, you like the newest mail on top. The default in Thunderbird is to sort the mailboxes by date in ascending order. This is just stupid, it makes the newest mail go on the bottom, and on top of that, it will put mail sent by someone with a wrong date on their computer somewhere in the middle of it all, so you don’t notice it easily.
The fix for this, is to choose to sort it by order received, and descending order. But changing it for every and all folders if you have a few, is annoying, and for all new folders it will also be wrong. So what do you do? Open the options, go to advanced and then Config Editor. Then confirm you’ll be careful, and in the new window that pops up write the following in the text-field on top:mailnews.default_sort
Then double-click on the sort_order and change it to 2 (the number 2).
Then double-click on the sort_type and change it to 21 (the number 21).
Close the window, and then click on ok in the options window. This will now apply for all your new mailboxes, but for all the existing ones I am afraid you will have to change it manually through the “View -> Sort By” menu.
Bjørge: You shouldn’t comment when you’re drunk 😉
> This will now apply for all your new mailboxesI found out that you can get round that by deleting your .msf files from your profile directory in the process of researching http://charlieharvey.org.uk/page/thunderbird_sorting . Hope that’s helpful to peeps struggling with the ‘wrong’ sort order in their existing folders 🙂