How to Remove the History When Replying in Thunderbird

You can disable automatic quotation of past emails in Thunderbird.

It’s normally a good practice to include the history or previous messages in an email exchange when you reply to provide context to the discussion. However, if you have an extended back-and-forth with someone via email, the history can stretch back days or weeks and often only adds to the length of the email without providing value. Mozilla Thunderbird lets you remove history from your replies. You can also configure whether your reply begins above or below the history if you choose to keep history for some messages.

Instructions

1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird.

2. Click “Tools” and then click “Account Settings.”

3. Click “Composition and Addressing” under your email account in the Accounts panel. Uncheck the “Automatically Quote the Original Message When Replying” checkbox. Click “OK.”

Tips & Warnings

• If you use multiple email accounts in Thunderbird, you can set history quotes separately for each account. For example, you might keep history enabled for a business account while turning it off on your personal account.

• If you do not disable quotes on all of your accounts, you can set where your reply begins in the “Composition and Addressing” window of the account. Click the “Then” drop-down menu and select “Start My Reply Above the Quote” or “Start My Reply Below the Quote.”

• To remove the history from an individual email reply, open the email, click the “Reply” button, then press “Ctrl-A” to highlight the quoted history and press the “Delete” key.

References

• Stevens Institute of Technology: Thunderbird
• University of Illinois at Chicago: Setting Up the Thunderbird Email Program

Resources

• Mozilla: Thunderbird