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Tool Bars frequently vanishing

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 22 views
  • Last reply by dmemphis

dmemphis
dmemphis
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My 92 year old Father is plagued the frequent disappearance of the "Mail Toolbar" from the main mail window and the "Composition Toolbar" from the Write window. I have seen both tool bars missing at the same time! Sometimes the "Menu bar" is also missing from both windows too. Granted he manages to push buttons and click on things he shouldn't. But it seems unlikely that he is accomplish this disabling with wild user interface manipulations. I am not aware of any way of turning the tool bars on and off except by descending the View menus... and I don't think he goes there. Am I wrong? Are there button sequences that control the Toolbar enables?

I of course have written up instructions for how to restore the tool bars. The operations are difficult... he does not have great coordination to accurately operate the mouse through the multiple levels of the View menu to re-enable the bars. It is very frustrating for him. This has been happening for several years now and I have pulled out a lot of hair over this. Is there a known bug that causes these to vanish? I don't think we have installed any add-ons that could be doing mischief. If not I have to assume flying fingers and clicks are causing this. I don't know. But if so, might I suggested a feature of a "screen configuration lock" that would freeze the screen configuration selections?

My 92 year old Father is plagued the frequent disappearance of the "Mail Toolbar" from the main mail window and the "Composition Toolbar" from the Write window. I have seen both tool bars missing at the same time! Sometimes the "Menu bar" is also missing from both windows too. Granted he manages to push buttons and click on things he shouldn't. But it seems unlikely that he is accomplish this disabling with wild user interface manipulations. I am not aware of any way of turning the tool bars on and off except by descending the View menus... and I don't think he goes there. Am I wrong? Are there button sequences that control the Toolbar enables? I of course have written up instructions for how to restore the tool bars. The operations are difficult... he does not have great coordination to accurately operate the mouse through the multiple levels of the View menu to re-enable the bars. It is very frustrating for him. This has been happening for several years now and I have pulled out a lot of hair over this. Is there a known bug that causes these to vanish? I don't think we have installed any add-ons that could be doing mischief. If not I have to assume flying fingers and clicks are causing this. I don't know. But if so, might I suggested a feature of a "screen configuration lock" that would freeze the screen configuration selections?

All Replies (2)

Matt
Matt
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Right click the toolbar or the menu bar. it is on the context menu. I can see someone with coordination issues right clicking instead of left clicking.

I think perhaps you need to learn some basic coding skills if you do not have them and make a restore for your father. Both of those setting are stored in the session.json file. So if you were to make a backup copy of that with a small batch file to copy it back into place then no coordination would be required. If you want assistance with doing such a thing. I need to know the full path to the Thunderbird profile folder.

dmemphis
dmemphis Question owner
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Thanks for the json file tip. Yes I can do that. I might be able to make a batch file restore tool that it that is easy enough for him to invoke himself. Thanks for the offer to help.

Be on the lookout however, in case there is another explanation for the settings changing under windows 10... After an update I have seen the email listing divide to show the content of the email announcement that an update has been done- if the updates are able to change that setting to put the message in view its probably able to "dink" the other settings too.