Tell Thunderbird not to truncate or wrap lines when sending email

When I compose and send an email (I always write plain-text emails) in Thunderbird, it always truncates my sentences and adds line breaks in the middle of my sentences.

How do I turn this feature off? It is quite annoying to me.

For instance, when I send people long URLs, the URL gets cut in the middle because of the automatic line breaks.

I am using the latest Thunderbird 9 for Mac OS X

hpy

Posted 2012-01-13T22:31:33.580

Reputation: 5 269

1I would have upvoted but no research effort was evident. – nslntmnx – 2018-01-04T03:20:19.390

2@nslntmnx Sometimes it may be unclear even where to start researching. – Dr_Zaszuś – 2018-04-23T11:15:11.023

Answers

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Thunderbird#Disable_word_wrapping_in_outgoing_messages

Disable word wrapping in outgoing messages

Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Config Editor

Set the preference called "mail.wrap_long_lines" to false

... mail.wrap_long_lines to control the wrapping of long lines (defaults to true)

user89272

Posted 2012-01-13T22:31:33.580

Reputation:

1It's enough to close the mail window (save as draft, close and reopen if you do not want to start over). – fuenfundachtzig – 2014-07-23T09:42:06.347

1@Joost, setting the "mailnews.wrap_length" to 0, actually did fix it for me. Thanks. – Vicer – 2015-03-03T22:17:58.803

9As of Thunderbird 45.1 or earlier, the mailnews.wrap_length setting is now called mailnews.wraplength. – tanius – 2017-01-20T21:31:53.097

40This did not work for me until I toggled mailnews.wrap_length to zero as well. Then it worked like a charm, even with wrap_long_lines to false. This answer did point me towards the Config Editor, which is a good thing. – Joost – 2013-08-12T13:36:14.310

1Moreover, I had to close and re-launch TB to make it notice the new setting. For the record, this happened with TB 24 under Ubuntu 12.04 x64. – Marcello Romani – 2014-03-11T12:44:50.397

Setting mailnews.wraplength to 0 disables wrapping on compose window, but as a side-effect does not wrap sent messages.

I addressed this problem by setting:

mailnews.wraplength 0
mail.compose.wrap_to_window_width true
plain_text.wrap_long_lines true
view_source.wrap_long_lines true

Freeman

Posted 2012-01-13T22:31:33.580

Reputation: 315

1Can you give an example of how it doesn't "wrap sent messages"? I'm wondering if I should use your settings or the basic mailnews.wrap_length version. – Paul – 2015-10-25T16:25:36.563

Was there a typo in this answer? In Thunderbird 45.1.0 there's mailnews.wraplength but not mailnews.wrap_length – Graham Perrin – 2016-05-22T11:22:10.670

I have amended the answer to use mailnews.wraplength – Freeman – 2016-05-30T05:57:16.097

It may work for you, but you reported some settings that say the exact opposite of what is asked. This smells like cargo cult. – ceztko – 2018-02-20T00:00:40.853

For me, the accepted answer did not show any effect.

As Joost pointed out in his comment, the correct solution is setting

mailnews.wraplength → 0

in the config editor (Edit → Preferences → Advanced → General → Config Editor...).

Scz

Posted 2012-01-13T22:31:33.580

Reputation: 263

I think this should be an answer on its own, as Joost's comment might be overlooked and Freeman's answer adds more settings that are unnecessary for the addressed problem.

– Scz – 2017-03-24T13:21:33.087

There is also an addon that can be used to disable the wrapping without messing with the configuration editor:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/toggle-word-wrap/

With this addon the wrapping can be toggled with CTRL+SHIFT+W (the message must be started in text mode, it doesn't work in HTML mode).

Emmanuel Bourg

Posted 2012-01-13T22:31:33.580

Reputation: 221

With Thunderbird 45.1.0 on KDE on PC-BSD 11.0-CURRENTMAY2016 I can enable that add-on but the resulting menu option is greyed out. – Graham Perrin – 2016-05-22T11:23:34.937

2@GrahamPerrin Probably because you are in HTML mode (or switched to Text mode from the HTML mode after opening the new message) – Emmanuel Bourg – 2016-05-23T07:53:51.793

1OK, the underlying problem may be that I have never successfully got plain text by default. I might find a workaround/fix for that elsewhere. Thanks. – Graham Perrin – 2016-05-25T16:59:17.457

Concerning URLs, it is actually sufficient to enclose them in < and >.

Tobias Kienzler

Posted 2012-01-13T22:31:33.580

Reputation: 3 262

@chipperyman573 Question title: "Tell Thunderbird not to [...] wrap lines" question body "for instance [...] long URLs". One answer: put it between < and >. Not as good as the accepted one, yet a lot quicker and also working if you prefer to have the remaining text wrapped – Tobias Kienzler – 2014-02-16T08:04:48.920

Yeah I misread the answer, sorry. – Jon – 2014-02-16T08:08:05.753

@chipperyman573 no worries, I guess you saw it in the low quality queue, right? I'm also sometimes too quick there, that's why multiple votes are required after all :7 – Tobias Kienzler – 2014-02-16T08:14:56.727

1Yeah, I flagged it and realized "I'm way to tired to be doing this" and took a nap. Didn't last long though sadly... – Jon – 2014-02-16T08:15:28.330

Open a msg to type. At the top Edit> Rewrap. Fixed! Found this by exploring everything when it suddenly starting happening to me.

Polly

Posted 2012-01-13T22:31:33.580

Reputation: 1