Office 365 (Thunderbird) - Format a Message

Best Effort Support Only

This document contains instructions on using a non-Microsoft email client, such as Apple Mail or Thunderbird. Microsoft does not recommend these clients for use with Office 365, and there are often significant limitations in client functionality as a result.

Because of this, the DoIT Help Desk is only able to offer best effort support for these clients, and certain issues may require the use of a Microsoft client in order to be resolved. For more information on Office 365 client support, please see: Office 365 - Which clients/protocols will be supported?.

Thunderbird messages are composed in HTML. If it is necessary to compose your message in Rich Text Format (.rft) please see the second half of this document.

  1. Open Thunderbird
  2. Select Write for a new message, or Reply/Forward for an existing message

    Write button

    Reply or Forward buttons

  3. When you open a message window, you will see the following basic formatting options:
    • Font type
    • Font size
    • Text markup (bold, italics, underline)
    • Text highlight/background color
    • Text color
    • Text alignment
    • Bulleting and numbering
    • Text Indentation

  4. Use these options to format your message as needed
On rare occasions it will be necessary to write emails without formatting, if you need to turn off HTML in your Thunderbird emails, use the following steps.

Turning off HTML

On a Mac
  1. Open Thunderbird
  2. On the top menu bar, select the drop down menu Tools and choose Account Settings
  3. From the list of settings on the left, select Composition and Addressing
  4. Uncheck the Compose messages in HTML format box
  5. Select OK
  6. Your messages will no longer have any formatting options, to turn HTML back on, recheck the Compose messages in HTML format box and select OK
In Windows
  1. Open Thunderbird
  2. Select Write

    Write button

  3. From the top menu on the message window, select Account Settings

    Accounts settings sub-menu selection

  4. Highlight Composition and Addressing from the menu
  5. Uncheck the Compose messages in HTML format box

    box to uncheck compose messages in html format

  6. Select OK
  7. Close the blank mail you started, this mail was created in HTML and you will need to start a new mail to use Rich Text Format
  8. Select Write
  9. Your messages will no longer have any formatting options. To turn HTML back on, recheck the Compose messages in HTML format box and Select OK

See Also:



Keywords:microsoft office365 o365 thunderbird formatting html text rich settings   Doc ID:39363
Owner:Help Desk KB Team .Group:DoIT Help Desk
Created:2014-04-22 16:23 CDTUpdated:2020-08-13 18:22 CDT
Sites:DoIT Help Desk, Office 365
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