Sounds like you are just seeing the Today Pane that is turned on and off under the View Menu. The shortcut for turning the Today Pane on and off is F11.

Lightning is the calendar in Thunderbird. To open it in it's own tab you go to Events and Tasks on the menu and click Calendar The shortcut is control+shift+c.

To set options you go to Calendar Options in the menu system. There are 2 ways to get there. 1. using the App Menu button hover over Options-Click Options when the submenu appears, then go to Calendar.

2. using the Menu Bar select Tools-Options-Calendar

That was very nice. Now I need to find out how to colour code my entries. Please let me know how to do this. Thank you.

Follow the instructions already provided and go to Calendar Options. Look at categories for a start.

I went to Tools - Options - Calendar. At the tab Categories I see many colours. At the tabs General and Views I did not see what setting I should select to get the entries coloured like in Outlook.

This is not Outlook. What you see is what you have to work with. If you have a specific question, ask it. I do not use Outlook. I do not care how it works and it is not relevant to Thunderbird.

The General and Views tabs are not mentioned so it is no surprise that there is nothing under those tabs to do with assigning colors.

Under Categories you will see the colors for the default categories. Change them if you wish. Select a category and click Edit. Use the color picker. You can also create new categories and assign colors to them. Now you are done here.

When you create an event there is a Category drop down list where you pick the appropriate category and the color you picked earlier will show on the event.

I am afraid that I have tried this. I have even tried to include an attachment but this was not accepted. I can send you an attachment which illustrates the problem.

All correspondence is done here in this forum. The form accepts jpg files with no problem.

The forum is staffed by volunteers and are not interested in accepting anything directly.

Maybe try describing what does not meet your needs instead of just saying it does not work.

I managed to save these as JPG and attached them. Please see what I have in Categories and what my calendar looks like. Thanks.

I see color. It appears that all your events are classed under the same category and show light blue. If you make a new event and set the category as Followup, is it purple.

I made a new calendar entry and selected a category. Alas, in my calendar all the entries are still grey. Please see attachment of entry. Thanks.

Show a picture of this new event on your calendar.

Hi, this is what I see in my calendar for this entry. Thanks.

Now I am confused. On my Lighting setup the color band at the end of the event title reflects what calendar I added the event to. I have several different calendars created and each has it's own color. The background color the event title reflects the color of the category that I assigned to the event.

Attached is a screenshot of my calendar with the Calendar Options window on top of it. On the left side is all my calendars and the colors I have assigned to them. In the Options window is my Categories and their colors.

I have added a Dentist appointment to my Gmail calendar and set the category of this event to Doctor. The Category setting made the Event title have a red background and the yellow band on the left end of the title indicates it is on the Gmail calendar.

Then I added a Vet appointment for my dog Zoey. It is added to the Zoey calendar with a category of Pet. The fuchsia background reflects the Category of Pet and the blue band shows it is on my Zoey calendar.

Cinco de Mayo has the default grey background because it is on the Holiday calendar and it is a locked calendar and I cannot change the background color but it has the light purple band to indicate the Holiday calendar.

I will add that I am still using version Thunderbird 60.9.1 with Lightning 6.2.9.1 because version 68.5.0 is still working out the bugs. I am not an early adopter.

Thanks for your reply. Maybe I should have stayed with Thunderbird 60.9.1. I was advised to upgrade to 68.5.0. Should I download and install Lightning 6.2.9.1 separately? Thanks.

I do not have any advice there. It is my understanding that the jump from 60 to 68 makes changes to your profile that you have to reverse. There are many threads discussing this so you might look at some of them. My experience with Thunderbird, especially in the last year or so, is unless you need a particular fix in the new version, avoid it for a month or so. Thunderbird is in a turmoil right now. They do not have much support from Mozilla and Mozilla changed the base engine that both Thunderbird and Firefox use. Mozilla dumped Thunderbird about 5 years ago and a volunteer group took over. The Thunderbird Council that maintains Thunderbird seems to be struggling to keep it afloat.

Thanks for your reply. I am disappointed to hear that Thunderbird is in turmoil. I was not informed, via the news media or any other way. In fact following the demise of Eudora I switched to Thunderbird. I also have Outlook but I much prefer Thunderbird. Therefore I decided to move all my e-mail and accounts to the latter. If they do not succeed in keeping Thunderbird afloat I reckon that I will have to find another e-mail application.