Works for me, have you tried restarting with add-ons disabled tgo see if it might be an addon causing this? It is on the help menu

Thanks for replying Matt but restarting with add-ons disabled didn't fix it.

After the restart I checked the add-ons, the disabled ones were in EXTENSIONS, APPEARANCE and LANGUAGE, my PLUGINS said Always Active should I try it with these set to "Never Active", these seem to be more Firefox plugins than thunderbird.

You right about the plugins, Thunderbird get them from the registry and shares them with Firefox if it is installed.

Select Alt+V and then the Zoom entry from the menu. What shortcut is described beside the Zoom entry? I recall someone using a non English version saying that their localization had changed the Zoom shortcut. What we do next depends on the shortcut displayed (chase a bug, or change an assignment)

"Select Alt+V and then the Zoom entry from the menu. What shortcut is described beside the Zoom entry?"

It shows Crtl++.

Ctrl++ zooms in OK when I'm reading emails. It's writing either new emails or replying to them when zoom doesn't work (neither Ctrl++ nor when selecting zoom directly from the view drop down menu)

I must admit that I've never atually used it in this way before, so cannot say if it worked previously, but i've just tested this myself on v31.0 and I agree the Zoom Ctrl++ does not work in the Write message window but does work when reading emails.

I tried with View > Zoom > Zoom In I tried with 'Zoom Text only' selected and unselected. I tried Ctrl++

I'm using Vista OS using TB: 31.0 language en-GB (English British)

Matt and electric - what OS etc are you using?

Electric is using Ubuntu or at least that is what the user agent string from Firefox said when the original post was made X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64, I am using windows 7Pro and i can not duplicate with daily builds. Have not installed 31 as such yet. Having enough troubles with memory leaks in add-ons.

I've created a bug report.

• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1045578

electric - please add your details to this bug report as you are using a different OS. Please 'vote' for the bug.

I've added a comment to the bug.

My earlier version of Thunderbird did not have this problem.  I  hope it  gets looked at soon as being partially sighted it 's something I used every day,

Using Linux LMDE and Thunderbird 31.0 here and zoom (control+wheel up) in a compose windows works for me, though ctrl++ and ctrl+- don't.

I'd suggest that zooming every time you write a message is not efficient.

Tools|Options|Formatting|Display lets you set the DISPLAY font, regardless of what font you compose with. Furthermore, the Advanced option lets you set it for each character encoding and its associated font.

Your situation exemplifies why I advocate plain text messaging, or at least the avoidance of setting explicit font sizes when composing; the correct size for the recipient is for him to choose, not for the sender to impose on him. If you display in a large font that you can work with, but send in plain text, it will display at whatever size your correspondent chooses, regardless of your own preference.

Setting a large font in the composition settings is the wrong way to go, as you have already recognized.

Many, many thanks Zenos, I didn't know about the control+wheel up for zooming and yes it works for me as well.

Also you are correct it is inefficient to use it every time I write so thanks for the "Display" setting tip. Too get to the "Display" options is different for me using Ubuntu 12.04, where it is found in"Preferences" selected from the "edit" dropdown menu.

Plain text sounds like a good idea as well. I've checked and my "Send options" are set to "Send Message both in plain test and HTML", I could choose "Convert the message to plain test" which is best?

Tools|Options is a link to an article explaining the variations across operating systems. I too use Linux, but give directions for the majority Windows user-base. There is also the new Application Menu button, just to further cloud the issue. ;-)

http://chrisramsden.vfast.co.uk/13_Menus_in_Thunderbird.html http://www.ramsden.org.uk/5_Lost_toolbars.html

The default composition mode is set up in each account:

Tools|Account Settings|<select account>|Composition & Addressing

…has a checkbox to set HTML as the default.

Whatever the state of this checkbox, you can always select the opposite setting on the fly by holding down shift when you Write, Reply or Forward. So you can try plain text without making any permanent changes.

Thunderbird is intended to be able to send in plain text if what you have written doesn't explicitly or implicitly engage any formatting features. However, even simple tricks like using /italics/ or *bold* will provoke it into switching into full HTML.

IIRC the "convert to plain text option" is there for your correspondents who prefer plain text, or need it, for reasons such as using a text-to-speech tool. This can be set per user in their entry in your Address Book.