Clicking on 'Date' column header will reverse whatever is the current view.

New mail at the top means it's much easier to locate. That means the list is sorted in Descending order. If you want new mail at the bottom of list then you need to sort in Ascending order. Please check whether you want 'threaded' or Unthreaded view, because by default you may discover 'threaded' is set up by default which means new mail within a thread is not necessarilly very obvious.

check you have the following: Select 'Folder' View > Sort by > Set up to use: 'Date', 'Ascending' and 'Unthreaded' (or 'Threaded' if desired)

Thanks Toad-Hall I have done all that but when Thunderbird opens it goes to the top message irrespective of the DATE. I sort in Ascending order but when I open Thunderbird it highlights the email at the top of the list irrespective of the date. I want the newest email at the bottom of the list to be highlighted when I open Thunderbird

OK. I'll have to see if I can locate a reported bug.

In the meantime, do you have any addon extensions ? If yes, what are they ?

Do you still have same issue if you restart Thunderbird in Troubleshoot Mode ?

Thanks I started in Troubleshooting mode will add-ons disabled- same problem Only add-on is a language tool to check spelling. Thank you for trying to help!

Something interesting. I use UNIFIED INBOX. If I check just one email address then all new messages are shown at the bottom of the queue as it always has but if I use UNIFIED then Thunderbird will open with oldest email highlighted at the top of the list

Something interesting. I use UNIFIED INBOX. If I check just one email address then all new messages are shown at the bottom of the queue as it always has but if I use UNIFIED then Thunderbird will open with oldest email highlighted at the top of the list

That's really helpful, so basically this issue presents itself in the 'Unified' folder.

I've got beta 116.0b7 running with an imap gmail account. As I've only got the one account I'm not using Unified. I have 'Sort by' > 'Date' > 'Descending' > 'Unthreaded' meaning newset at top.

I switched on 'View > Folders > 'Unified' so it appears below 'All' folders in Folder Pane. I noticed the following. Unified Inbox has newest at the bottom so I checked 'Sort by' on that 'Unified Inbox' and it says 'Sort by' > 'Date' > 'Ascending' > 'Unthreaded' I also see a load of column headers which are like a default set and not the ones I prefer to use nor displayed in the order I prefer.

Selected the mail account Inbox subfolder and I see the settings I had set up. I also see all the column in the order I prefer. Sort by' > 'Date' > 'Descending' > 'Unthreaded'

I had to select the Unified Inbox and reset to 'Sort by' to my desired setting. But in my case this worked, Unified Inbox now has new mail at top and focus at top.

I noticed it is impossible to use the ordinary Inbox and then use column header options to apply to all 'Unified' folders regarding the column choice or the sort by view choice. It's also not possible to do this just for Unified folders. So that is something to look at as well.

So this looks like whatever is set for Sort by when using 'All', the opposite is applied to 'Unified' folders.

Did another test altering settings to replicate what you use. Set all my normal folder in 'All' view to sort by Date Ascending Unthreaded - like you. Set 'Unified' Inbox folder the same. Unselected the View > Folders > Unified. REstarted Thunderbird.

All my normall folders still have Date Ascending Unthreaded Enabled the 'Unified' view Checked Unified Inbox. It has Date Ascending Unthreaded which is desired, but the focus is at the top.

I do believe I've managed to recreate the same problem as you. This does not fix your issue, but it means I can present a bug with full instructions on how to replicate it and that's what the bug people like - good info on how to replicate.

I've created a bug report: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1845934

I had this problem with the latest (WIn11) update , and it wasn't solved by clicking the header to reverse the sort order. However, after reading this thread, I tried closing TBird, opening it again and then clicking "Date" twice. That left the sort order unchanged, but now with the cursor on the newest email. Whether that's a permanent fix remains to be seen, but it's certainly a quick bandaid solution!

May I jump in here with a similar problem, which might possibly help those working on this bug? If people think I should instead post this in its own thread, please say so. But I'm wondering if these are related issues.

Bear with me this is a little hard to explain. Used to be that whenever I opened (i.e. clicked on) an email inbox folder, it would by default pop to the newest email on the list (in my case the bottom of the list). Since the most recent update to 115.4.1 Supernova, when I click on an inbox folder for any of my email accounts, it pops to seemingly random emails in the list of emails in that folder. This means to see my newest (unread) emails, I need to click on an inbox, then manually scroll down to the newest emails every time. If I click on another folder, then click back to the first one, it pops to a different seemingly random email. If I click the date field header twice, it does move to the newest email. But again, that is an extra step I didn't used to have to perform. I seem to recall a checkbox years ago that said something like "open to newest email", but can't find that now. Any suggestions?

Hi BobinCT

You have the same issue. It does not seem to matter whether you are using 'Unified' or 'All' folder view. I have deliberately set one of my folders - lets call it 'TB Support' to use 'Ascending' and it gets new mail filtered into it. Then I select to view newest mail at bottom and then move to aload of other folders. Much later, when I got new mail in that 'TB Support' folder, I selected it and focus was still on the last email selected. There was in fact about 12 new mail which were completely hidden at the bottom and it needed me to scroll in order to see them.

In addition to the two clicks on 'Date' column header to force a sort by date which then gets focus in correct location, if you have focus in the Message List - aka selected any email in list - 'Ctrl'+'End' keys do get you to bottom of list quickly.

Until this bug is fixed it may be less stressful to sort by descending then all new mail are at the top and it words perfectly ok.

Please note: it would be really helpful if anyone with this problem could use the bugzilla link below and Vote for this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1845934 You would have to create an account in bugzilla. You can find the 'Vote' button under 'Details' near the top of the bug report. You will then get another window showing list - select the checkbox for the bug and click on 'Save Changes' Then your vote will increase the Vote for this bug number. it helps to get more attention from developers.

Landing in the middle somewhere when going to a folder was a bug in 15.0, fixed shortly thereafter, and reintroduced in 15.4.1. I put it back in bugzilla. I did however find a potential fix, for now. Note that I do NOT use threading and do NOT use unified, just a lot of Local folders, and I always use Ascending order (new on bottom).

In Settings ->General, at the bottom open Config Editor. Then in the search box on top type mailnews.scroll_to_new_message (though you really only need to get as far as the sc and it will only have one option left). Then click on the arrows on the right so it is set to false. This setting was somehow bollixed up in 15.4.1 so that it works backwards! And not fixed in 15.4.2. At least for me, folders now show up at the bottom, or where you left then, when you select them, *except* for the first time you select them after restarting the program.

How is 115.5.0 ?

I moved my work computer, the one that handles most of my mail, back onto 115.2.3, which works tolerably well. But in order to see what it would do, I took another computer, one whose mail performance is less critical, onto 115.5. The behavior was almost the opposite of what I described above. The first time I clicked on a folder it went right to the bottom. This happened on most of my folders. It looked fixed! BUT then I waited a few minutes and started moving among folders again. And they're random again. For example, just using my two most critical folders, Inbox (unfiltered) and let's call it Filter1, clicking on the mailbox name on the left lands me (let's do a trial, I'll give the newest date in the window):

Inbox 1/15/2019 Folder1 7/19/2021 Inbox 6/3/2019 Folder1 3/16/2021 Inbox 11/19/2019 Folder1 11/22/2020

I don't see a pattern, just randomness. Now let's revert mailnews.scroll-to-new-message to FALSE, which worked for a while (i.e., backwards):

Inbox 2/27/2020 Folder1 8/10/2020 Inbox 6/15/2020 Folder1 4/17/2020

Well, it does seem to prefer 2020's mail... but no longer a fix (was one in 15.4.1, not in 15.4.3).

Now let's try layout.css.scroll-anchoring.enabled to FALSE as Hartmut suggested:

Folder1 11/25/2023 Inbox 11/25/2023 Folder1 11/25/2023 Folder 2 (for variety) 11/25/2023

Now that's one of those back settings that isn't described anywhere public and it certainly sounds like scroll anchoring should be enabled to keep going back to the same spot. But turning it off does seem to fix the bug. And if I scroll through the mail to another date and return to that folder later, it remembers where I was, correctly, with scroll-anchoring.enabled set to false. No new messages have come in lately so I don't know if scroll-to-new-messages means anything now (it didn't impact these tests).

So you may want to look at the logic, and changes, surrounding those two settings now! Thanks Hartmut.

Now let's try layout.css.scroll-anchoring.enabled to FALSE as Hartmut suggested: [...] Now that's one of those back settings that isn't described anywhere public and it certainly sounds like scroll anchoring should be enabled to keep going back to the same spot.

To see what this is all about, take a look at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/overflow-anchor/Guide_to_scroll_anchoring.

But turning it off does seem to fix the bug. And if I scroll through the mail to another date and return to that folder later, it remembers where I was, correctly, with scroll-anchoring.enabled set to false. No new messages have come in lately so I don't know if scroll-to-new-messages means anything now (it didn't impact these tests). So you may want to look at the logic, and changes, surrounding those two settings now! Thanks Hartmut.

As I see it, the logic of scrolling to the right point should be fine, it is really the underlying Firefox code that actually does the scrolling that sometimes screws up, apparently because scroll anchoring still has some issues. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1519644 for an overview.

So turning off scroll anchoring for the thread tree altogether may really be the way to go.

Both the scrolling and the sorting issues have received fixes in the last six months.

If you are still seeing a problem please post a new topic https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new/thunderbird