How to make a Thunderbird Template using a graphic with left-hand design 

A stationery Template with a pretty graphic, cool font and everything!

In Thunderbird, start a new message via File - New - Message

Once you're in the new message window, click inside the text area so that the Format menu will become available.  Click Format - Page Colors and Background. 

 

Choose a left-border graphic file for your background.  It needs to be longer than the standard screen sizes because it's going to tile all over the page.  Here's the one I used:  right-click to save file

If it's a dark graphic, pick some light colors for the text.  Don't worry that the text is over the top of the image in the sample box.  We'll fix that next.  Click OK.  

The background should tile: 

Now the fun part.  Let's do the font first, because for some reason if you do the margin, then change anything else, the margin goes away and you have to do it over again.  

Pick fonts other people are likely to have on their systems, like Times New Roman and Verdana.  Make the font look cool by changing its color and size. 

Go to Format - Page Colors and Background - Advanced Edit

The next box has tabs across the top.  Click the Inline Style tab. 

Note that you're going to do several things in this box BEFORE you hit OK. 

In the Property box type this:

font-family

And in the Value box type the name of your font.  Do NOT click OK yet! 

We are still in the Advanced Property Editor - Inline Style box.  Once you've typed something into both the Property and Value boxes, a line will appear above (as you see in the next picture) and you can begin to enter the next line.  

So, to make the size larger, into the Property box type: 

font-size

And in the Value box type your choice of 

large
x-large
xx-large 

Still don't click OK. 

Next is the margin.  You need to know how many pixels to indent your margin to leave space for the graphic.  You can look at Outlook Express's stationery and copy down the number...  or here's a handy dandy pixel ruler I made.  Save the pixel ruler and then open it in a viewer that you can align over the top of the Thunderbird dialog boxes.  

Screenshot of this in action  

Looks like 100 pixels should do it.  So click in the Property box once again (we're still in the Inline tab of the Advanced Properties box) and enter:  

Property:  margin-left 

Value:  100

Now click OK!  Click OK one more time, and you're back to your message.  

The cursor should be in the right place, ready to go.  In the Subject line box, type a description for your Template. 

Don't touch anything else!  Go to File - Save As - Template right now.  I've no idea why these values tend to go away... but if something isn't right and you go back and change a value or remove a line, everything gets out of whack.  So you need to do this all at once and save it. 

If your stationery ever gets messed up, especially if you're trying to save someone else's stationery as a Template and things don't behave correctly, feel free to go to that Advanced Property Editor - Inline Style tab and delete all the values.  None of them are required.  Once they're all gone, you can start over, inserting your own lines one at a time.  

Also, don't move Templates from one Template folder to another.  Leave them in whichever Template folder they went into by default, possibly the one under Local Folders if you ever used Global Inbox.  Don't know why, but moving my Templates from folder to folder messed them all up and I had to start again.  

Do you still love Thunderbird?  I still do  :-)