Always start reply with "Body Text" style

[periodic]

Many of my reply emails start out with "Body Text", but still a fair number begin with "Paragraph" or other setting which I then need to adjust to be Body Text. It must be determined by the email I'm replying to. Is there a way to force the replies to start out with Body Text? I have told thunderbird to place my reply above the original message, and HTML format is checked.

[DanRaisch]

Have you checked menu path Tools->Options->Composition->General to ensure that "Use Paragraph format instead of Body Text by default" is not checked?

[periodic]

Wow - what a direct hit! I've changed it now and it has solved this long standing issue for me. Thank you!

[DanRaisch]

You're welcome.

[periodic]

Hmm...that change worked great until recently. The setting is still intact, but my formatting is all over the place - usually starts with a serif font (times new roman) instead of the spec'd "Variable Width" for paragraph. In fact if I type out a line or two, select that text, and change the times new roman to variable width, it immediately changes back to times new roman. On a reply the settings are "Paragraph" and "Times New Roman, serif". If I change Paragraph to Body Text it comes out ok but usually with too many line breaks; and when I try to remove the line breaks, the formatting starts getting mixed up (both font settings for different areas).

Any ideas?

[DanRaisch]

This is actually a related issue, not the same issue. Thunderbird does a poor job of dealing with HTML formatting. For one thing, the user can't see the placed codes. For any really complex formatting, it's better to compose without formatting and then add the formatting area by area, trying not to create any overlaps.

[periodic]

In this case, I'm not attempting any complex formatting. I'm just typing in Hi Dan and then hit return to write the body of the message. That "Hi Dan" is the Sans Serif font that the variable width style brings with it, but by the time I've hit Enter to start on the body of the message, it's Times New Roman. These days I'm spending a frustrating amount of time trying to get my very simple email responses to render as a single style.

[DanRaisch]

Are you starting from a template or replying/forwarding when this happens? Or is it a new "from scratch" message?

[periodic]

This is about replying; not sure about forwarding as I don't do that too often.

[periodic]

still hoping for additional input on this issue.

[DanRaisch]

When replying you may be facing HTML tags in the original message that are messing up your text when you compose the reply.

[periodic]

Yes, I expect that is true. But can't thunderbird insert a clean zone at the top section where my replies go, so the tbird html that is rendered is isolated?

[DanRaisch]

Perhaps it "could" but it hasn't thus far and I doubt that the issue is very high on the priorities list of the developers at this time.