Images Missing from Thunderbird Emails?

Are your Thunderbird messages missing images?

And is the text showing up in a strange looking font with lots of bold? This, and other differences in email appearance, can occur if you accidentally change the display setting of emails. There's a few settings that could have caused this. We'll list the most common based on the specific issue you're experiencing.

No images, strange font, and code

If your Thunderbird email message is displaying strange looking code (tags) after each link, images are missing (it looks like images have been stripped out), and the font appears different, or bold, then you've most likely changed the message body view inadvertently. To switch it back, simply:

• Browse to View -> Message Body As -> and select Original HTML.

Email message looks fine, but doesn't contain images

If the rest of your Thunderbird email message looks okay, but is missing images, or they appear to have been stripped out, it's very possible that you've changed a setting that won't let attachments (ie. pictures) appear inline (within the message body). To change this back, simply:

• Browse to View -> and select Display Attachments Inline.

I changes the above settings, but images still won't appear

If you made the above changes to your Thunderbird settings and images still aren't appearing in some of your messages, it may be that Thunderbird is blocking them because it thinks they are spam. To adjust your privacy settings and prevent the images from being stripped out, or not displaying at all (ie. being blocked), simply:

• Click on the button to the above right of the email message asking you whether you would like to load images.
• If the email message is from a trusted sender, you can click the link above the message specifying you would always like to load images in messages from this particular sender.

If you're still having troubles, or your changes aren't being saved (ie. next time you open Thunderbird the images won't display again) you can directly specify the default format Thunderbird should display email messages as in the config editor. To access it, simply:

• Browse to Tools -> Options -> Advanced tab -> Config Editor
• Search for mail.default_html_action and make sure it is set to 3 (allow original HTML). If you would like messages to open as text only (more secure, but you won't see images, change the setting to 1).