Thunderbird 3 tips

I'm not an expert on Thunderbird (e-mail client), but I have had to figure out a thing or two that I had trouble finding online. So, I thought I would jot them down here, maybe they'll turn up in searches.

Q: How do I change the date format for Windows? How do I change the date in Thunderbird in Windows? Change Thunderbird date format?

A1: This is the best answer (source)I found:
Changing the information displayed

To change the information displayed, modify these preferences. If you are using the configuration editor and the preference that you want to modify is missing, create it as an Integer preference:

Preference	Applies to	Default value
mail.ui.display.dateformat.today	Messages with today's date	0
mail.ui.display.dateformat.thisweek	Messages with a date in the past seven days	2
mail.ui.display.dateformat.default	Older messages	2

These preferences can have the following values:

Value	Meaning	Example date and time
0	No date	10:23 AM
1	Your system's long* date format	Friday, December 31 2003 10:23 AM
2	Your system's short* date format	12/31/1999 10:23 AM
3	Year and month, separated by a slash	1999/12 10:23 AM
4	Abbreviated day name	Fri 10:23 AM

* Some operating systems have only one date format. On these systems, the values 1 and 2 produce the same result. A2: Thunderbird accesses the Short Date under Control Panel | Regional and Language Support. Click the Customize button and the select the Date tab. Personally, I wanted to include the Day Name abbreviation and change the date format to ISO. So, I used "ddd, yyyy-MM-dd", that gives Tue, 1999-11-30.

Q: Thunderbird seems slow, how do I speed it up?

A: The Global indexing feature can slow things down a lot. To disable, go to Tools, Options and click on the General tab. Uncheck "Enable Global Search and Indexer". Thunderbird won't index any longer and won't be so slow.

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