Since adopting Thunderbird as my workstation email client, I’ve noticed that my workflow was constantly being interrupted by the fact that replying to an email message places the cursor at the end of the email chain.
Apparently it does this because: “Traditional netiquette (especially on Usenet and mailing lists) is to reply contextually beneath quoted material, trimming down the quotes to the minimum needed to establish context. “. That may have been the case, but these days, it seems like most email users want to see the freshest replies on top, then scroll down if they need to view the older messages.
So, for each email I had to respond to, I needed to spend a few seconds scrolling to the top of the email body. It was just a few seconds, but that time adds up over the number of emails I’d reply to daily (plus there was the irritation factor of having to do this all the time).
In my quest for time-efficiency, I found a solution in Mozilla’s knowledge base:
The mail.identity.default.reply_on_top preference sets the default value for the reply text position for each account/identity. It defaults to 0, to have the reply at the bottom. You can use the Config Editor at Tools -> Options -> General to set it to 1 to have the reply on top.
In Thunderbird v 3.1.11, the Config Editor is located behind a button under Tools -> Options -> Advanced –> General.
Note that attempting to set this preference under Account Settings -> Composition & Addressing did not work. That’s why I’m posting the Config Editor solution. 