# Thunderbird (XP) question about mailbox columns / icons

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-xp-question-about-mailbox-columns-icons/376256>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 12, 2006, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-xp-question-about-mailbox-columns-icons/376256 "2006-10-12T23:32:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [October 12, 2006, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-xp-question-about-mailbox-columns-icons/376256/1 "2006-10-12T23:32:44Z")

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My girlfriend has now gotten an undesired option turned on and can’t figure out what invoked it or how to turn it off:

Some messages in the Inbox now appear with what looks like a cartoon balloon off to the left of the message, which now has a tiny icon with either a + or a - sign in it; clicking on the + causes a related message (threaded somehow?) to appear, indented, below it, with a dashed line connecting the two.

She wants to go back to just showing all the emails in the inbox in consecutive order, each on its own line, with no threading.

I’m not a Thunderbird user (I use Eudora) and I’m a Mac person, and so far I’m not much help here.

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**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2006, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-xp-question-about-mailbox-columns-icons/376256/2 "2006-10-13T00:55:13Z")

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Under the “View” menu, look under the “Sorted” submenu and select “Unthreaded”. That should return things to normal.

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**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2006, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thunderbird-xp-question-about-mailbox-columns-icons/376256/3 "2006-10-13T00:56:28Z")

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[QUOTE=tanstaafl]  
Under the “View” menu, look under the “Sorted” submenu and select “Unthreaded”. That should return things to normal.  
[/QUOTE]

Make that the “Sort By” submenu… :smack: