I guess that these were considered such fundamental operations, each with an already existing variety of operations (mouse, keyboard, right-click, ctrl+c etc) that the Thunderbird devs didn't choose to replicate them again. Similarly, keyboard selection is relied upon a great deal in Thunderbird, rather than adding all the ugly (IMHO) checkboxes that now counterintuitively litter all Windows Explorer displays. So, if the devs expected you to use ctrl+right+shift to select the current text word by word, then ctrl+c to copy it, ctrl+x to cut it and ctrl+v to paste it would be quite natural, since your hands are already at the keyboard. Similarly, if you prefer to select by mouse, a right-click also offers options to copy, cut and paste, and there is also the possibility to drag selected text, serving cut and paste in one action. So it could be argued that there is no need for buttons. There used to be additional button add-ons for Thunderbird, but those that I know about don't appear to be under active maintenance and don't currently work with TB 31.0. You could build your own using a Custom Buttons add-on, but it isn't easy to find the appropriate function call to attach to your home-made buttons. :-( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/custom-buttons/ Here's the code you need if you try this add-on: cut: goDoCommand("cmd_cut") copy: goDoCommand("cmd_copy") paste: goDoCommand("cmd_paste") (taken from: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keyconfig_extension:_Thunderbird ) The tedious bit is finding suitable icons; the defaults are pretty but unhelpful coloured stars.