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someone changed gmail settings in firefox to HTML and want to know how to change it back to rich text format

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My mother was on a ocean cruise and when using Firefox to show her gmail account, it was very very slow due to the ship using satellite internet. This was costing too much as she was charged by time and it took several minutes to open anything. Some unknown person then decided to "HELP" mum by changing her inbox format settings to HTML - so she was told. She did not watch, nor did they tell or show her what they did and they handed it back "fixed". That was fine on the ship as the emails opened faster, but now she wants me to change it back and no matter where I look there are no instructions on how to change between HTML, RTF, and plain text (presuming this is what they did as it is very basic in appearance) for Gmail in Firefox, only for outlook. I went through all the options and settings and could not find any section involved with this format change (except in General there is a section at the bottom about "Vacation Responder" which has a button for changing the format between Rich Formatting and Plain Text. Can someone help with this problem please?

PS I told her to never let anyone else play with her PC and change settings without making sure that every change (eg - what they do, things they open and EVERY keystroke) is logged or written down (better yet also take a video of everything they do). And most important - to tell me what is going on prior to them playing with her devices. She now understands the dangers of allowing some random person to play with her devices.

My mother was on a ocean cruise and when using Firefox to show her gmail account, it was very very slow due to the ship using satellite internet. This was costing too much as she was charged by time and it took several minutes to open anything. Some unknown person then decided to "HELP" mum by changing her inbox format settings to HTML - so she was told. She did not watch, nor did they tell or show her what they did and they handed it back "fixed". That was fine on the ship as the emails opened faster, but now she wants me to change it back and no matter where I look there are no instructions on how to change between HTML, RTF, and plain text (presuming this is what they did as it is very basic in appearance) for Gmail in Firefox, only for outlook. I went through all the options and settings and could not find any section involved with this format change (except in General there is a section at the bottom about "Vacation Responder" which has a button for changing the format between Rich Formatting and Plain Text. Can someone help with this problem please? PS I told her to never let anyone else play with her PC and change settings without making sure that every change (eg - what they do, things they open and EVERY keystroke) is logged or written down (better yet also take a video of everything they do). And most important - to tell me what is going on prior to them playing with her devices. She now understands the dangers of allowing some random person to play with her devices.

Chosen solution

hi, there should be an option to switch back to the default view at the bottom of the gmail inbox. please also refer to google's documentation on the subject: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049

in case this didn't help, and settings were changed in firefox on a deeper level, you can also try to refresh the browser: Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

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hi, there should be an option to switch back to the default view at the bottom of the gmail inbox. please also refer to google's documentation on the subject: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049

in case this didn't help, and settings were changed in firefox on a deeper level, you can also try to refresh the browser: Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

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Thanks for your quick reply (a lot quicker than I expected) and good answer.

I had tried pressing the buttons at the bottom of Firefox, but nothing had changed. I presumed they did not apply to what had been done to Mum's laptop. There were some webpages that did not look right when opened. So I was hoping it was something in Firefox's setting's that could be just clicked back on. Out of frustration, I ended up getting rid of Firefox completely using Your Uninstaller to remove all traces and reloading it while I waited for a reply. That fixed it. Then I saw your reply. IE had worked OK, but even Mum is more comfortable using Firefox, I think they must have done something to not only change her email appearance, but also to Firefox itself so she could browse quicker. As you suggested, I may have gotten away with refreshing it, but I wasn't sure what had been done to it, so I just put in a new one, then added her bookmarks, et cetera.

Don't mind when other people play with a PC, but, for me anyway, it must be under supervision and a record kept of what they did.

Mum has a tendency to give me odd problems to fix, so far the funniest one has been one day she comes to me saying the keyboard just stopped working and when asked, claimed she did nothing to cause it (as always she said it just happened). So I spent ages trying her cordless keyboard's receiver in different USB's, changing batteries and then tested in 2 other PC's where it worked fine, Also trying a couple of other keyboards in her PC, but nothing worked, except the mouse. Turns out she had a heavy book sitting on the keyboard while she was reading it. After a fair period of time she went to use the keyboard and after moving the book, she saw a notification box (it would have said something about some keys being pressed permanently, would you like to disable the keyboard) on the screen when it came out of sleep mode. Without reading,, Mum just clicked OK to get rid of it. No more working keyboard. My biggest problem was that she did not remember the notification box. until I showed her why the keyboard was not working. "Oh I think I remember seeing something like that" she said. At least now she knows to read before clicking and if unsure, don't click anything, leave it and ask me. She isn't bad overall with a PC - taught herself how to use several programs like Powerpoint, but does not remember other things like how to move a file using windows explorer. She keeps saying that is why she gave birth to me - just so I can do these sorts of things and to fix her PC  :-)

Thanks again for your effort & time, and have a great day.