Please post two screenshots here. One showing the e-mail in Thunderbird, and one showing the e-mail in the browser. Edit the screenshots in a graphics program (like Paint), to block personal information before posting here.

See: How do I create a screenshot of my problem?

A screen shot will simply show you in a browser what should be seen and in Thunderbird that nothing shows up in the right column. But Thank you for your interest and your response.

I was looking at the source code in Thunderbird (I chose edit as a new email, and then clicked the Source (Html) tab. It shows a lot of repetitious, unnecessary code. I believe I'm going to have to do a screen share with my friend, the owner of the newsletter, and clean out a lot of extraneous code that somehow got into her newsletter template's right column.

A useful way to see the actual code for the e-mail you receive is to "View Source" when you are looking at the e-mail. See my screenshot below.

I'm sorry if you feel that my asking for the screenshots was pointless. Many people here (and many of my clients), will say something that they believe, but the reality may be different because they don't notice things like a computer tech will.

That's why I asked for screenshots. I've had innumerable situations where the person I'm trying to help missed something, but I trusted what they said. As a result I was lead down the wrong way.

I agree that the HTML should be cleaned up. I cannot find a program that actually produces clean HTML. Including Thunderbird, unfortunately.

What might be useful to you in figuring out the difference between newsletter you received by e-mail and the newsletter on the newsletter's website:

Right-click the newsletter e-mail in Thunderbird, and then choose "Save As", and save it as an HTML file.

Then open that HTML file in your web browser and see if the newsletter looks the same as the one on the website. If not, then look at the HTML to figure out the differences.

Have fun!

Thanks, Bruce.

I've been using PCs since 1985 and have done PC tech support myself, so that's why I said what I said about a screenshot.

I did take your suggestion and save the Thunderbird email as an html file even though the default for saving was eml. i didn't know if using an html extension would save it that way or not, but was pleasantly surprised when it did.

When I opened that html file in Google Chrome, it displayed the right column that's missing when I view the email in Thunderbird.

When I click the email in Thunderbird to open it full screen, it still shows the totally absent right column beside the very present left column. So I was surprised when saving it as html and viewing it in Google Chrome it worked fine. Apparently the browser can handle whatever is wrong with the html code but Thunderbird can't properly interpret it. That surprises me too.

Also, though I don't see in Thunderbird 45.6.0 the View Source menu you posted as a snapshot, I do have View/Message Source (Ctrl+U) on the View menu in Thunderbird and was able to look at the code that way, without having to open it as a new email and then click the source code tab, which is easier and faster. So thanks for the reminder.

I'm planning to get with my friend on Thursday night to do a screen share and see if we can clean up the extraneous garbage in the code so future emails, like past ones, will display both columns correctly.

I'm curious if Firefox would also display the HTML "incorrectly" like Thunderbird does. Theoretically, Thunderbird should display HTML the same as Firefox since they share code.

The HTML must be very convoluted to get different results like this. Good luck in sorting it out.

Good point, Bruce. Firefox 51.0b14 (32-bit) displayed that html file I saved from Thunderbird the same way that Thunderbird displayed it--with the missing right column! So it's definitely a Thunderbird/Firefox problem with interpreting the code. So we need to get that cleaned up.

Thanks for the suggestion.

check for absolute table definitions outside of the display area. Just a wild guess, but I have seen table the set weird widths just drop a column in the past.