Show InOut

If you manage incoming and outgoing mail in the same folder, you will probably lose track of something eventually. Thunderbird does not use tags to tell you whether a message is incoming or outgoing. Besides this, the software only shows either the recipient or the sender of the email, depending on whether you sent or received the message, but it does not do so dynamically (Figure 8).

The Show InOut add-on [7] lets you change this behavior. The installation follows the standard Extension Manager-based approach and does not require any special configuration.

After restarting Thunderbird, you will see new columns in the mail overview, which you can select in the normal way by clicking the list pictogram on the right. To be more precise, the plugin adds two options: In/Out and Counterparty. The former displays a symbol to tell you whether this is an incoming or outgoing message, whereas the latter shows the recipient or sender, depending on the message type.

If you insert the two columns and at the same time remove the legacy sender and target columns, you should see something like Figure 9. Thunderbird shows you the sender for incoming mail and the recipient for outgoing mail. The Show InOut website lists additional features that allow users to customize the add-on to suit their own needs.

Thunderbird has a powerful add-on interface that lets users extend its functionality. The "More Add-Ons" list does not claim to be complete, but it might whet your appetite.