View source for Thunderbird/Change account order

<metadescription>Changing the order of accounts and identities in thunderbird</metadescription>
<metakeywords>thunderbird, account, identity, order</metakeywords>
The order of accounts and identities cannot be changed without manually reording them in the configuration (using <tt>about:config</tt> or {{Filename|prefs.js}}).

== about:config (recommended) ==

* Tools > Options > Tab: Advanced > Tab : General > Config editor : "I'll be careful, I promise!"

Thunderbird stores the order of the accounts in <tt>mail.accountmanager.accounts</tt>. It is a comma-separated list of account designations. By reordering the designations in the list you change the order of the accounts as they appear in thunderbird except for the default account which always appears first.

  mail.accountmanager.accounts: account1,account2,account3,account4,account5,account6
  mail.accountmanager.defaultaccount: account1

To figure out which account belongs to each designation you can look for <tt>mail.account.account&lt;N&gt;.server</tt> (where N is the number) which contains a server designation:

  mail.account.account1.server: server1

Using the server designation you can search for <tt>mail.server.server1</tt> which can be used to figure out what each account is:

  mail.server.server1.hostname: example.net
  mail.server.server1.name: foo@example.net
  mail.server.server1.userName: foo
  ...

If you want Local Folders to appear first you need to use that as the default account.

== prefs.js ==

* {{Filename|~/.thunderbird/<your profile>/prefs.js}} in GNU/Linux, 
* {{Filename|C:\Documents and Settings\<your profile>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\****.default\prefs.js}} in Microsoft Windows XP, and 
* {{Filename|C:\Users\<your profile>\App Data\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\****.default\prefs.js}} in  Microsoft Windows Vista, 7 and 8.

{{Box file|prefs.js|
 user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account5,account3,account2,account4,account1,account7");
 user_pref("mail.accountmanager.defaultaccount", "account5");
}}

Follow same instructions as <tt>about:config</tt>.

{{Box note|You must not edit prefs.js while Thunderbird is running!}}

== Identities ==

The order of identities (within an account) can be reordered by modifying <tt>mail.account.account&lt;N&gt;.identities</tt> (and the actual identities can be found at <tt>mail.identity.id&lt;N&gt;</tt>)

[[Category:Thunderbird]]
[[Category:Linux]]