First, many users (including myself) prefer the vertical view, but to each his own. That is why TB offers options. If you use that small icon on right side of tool bar (called the hamburger menu), select view>layout and tick classic. If that isn't visible, you can click the alt key to display the menu bar and from there you can select View>layout and make your selection.

As I said above, that wonderful little icon you call a hamburger, IS WHERE IT BELONGS ON TWO ON TWO OF MY COMPUTERS and it works perfectly . ON THE THIRD COMPUTER IT IS NOT there and I cannot find a way to restore the classic view.

Actually, there is a "hamburger" icon at the top of the inbox column but the only options are "card view", "table view" "sort by" and "hide message list header" which is of no help.

PS In the future, please read the question.

This forum is supported only by volunteers who give of their own time to provide assistance on use of Thunderbird. I stated nothing that was offensive, so your response was uncalled for. Yes, I did read your question, and I offered an optional way to restore the classic view. You're welcome. If that option does not work, then the profile is corrupted and more assistance is needed.

In the future, please read the question.

First of all, everyone in this venue is expected to be respectful - on my reading David gave an reasonable response given what you had written.

I have TB 115.6.0 running on 3 computers (1 desktop and 2 laptops). On 2 computers there is a tiny icon on the right hand side in the menu bar that allows me to switch between the "new and improved" (but utterly horrible), side by side message list and the classic view. On the laptop I am currently using to write this request, TB 115.6.0 does not have that wonderful little icon and I am condemned to use the side by side display or find another mail client. Can someone help me find or restore that little icon that gives me a choice or alternatively lets me change the message list display back to its old useful configuration?

To reset, the small icon is the "message list display option" which switches between card view and table view https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-115-supernova-faq#w_step-1-turn-on-vertical-view. That element is new. But, that switch does not change between vertical and classic layouts (View > Layout).

If you are not seeing seeing the layout change or care view change, please:

• does the issue exist after doing Help > Troubleshoot Mode?
• if it does, please post a screen shot and contents of error console (ctrl+shift+J)

Also, is this the same computer that had the problem described in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1429542 ?

As an aside, why do software developers insist on making "improvements" that no one needs or wants?

On the contrary, cards view option was a long time, top request from users. So very much wanted by tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users.

The article at the link above showed me the secret handshake and I now have the classic view on all my computers.

Thank you.

I have a similar problem. Hard drive crashed so downloaded Thunderbird and it is the latest version. Although the 'instructions' show the Classic View Layout with Table View, I can only get something like vertical that shows only the long list of emails in the second column and the expanded email message in the far right. I MUCH prefer the default layout as shown for the newest version and don't understand why I didn't get it nor how to actually make it happen. I've tried about every link and search term I can think of but without any success. I also don't understand the Menu Bar and Unified Bar business AT ALL and wonder what happened to, say, tools and options like Return Receipt. I am so not a techy and this is making me a bit frantic. Thanks for any help, Margaret