Thunderbird Mail Client

Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Client 1.02 Tutorial

Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Client 1.0.2 Tutorial

Mozilla Thunderbird gives you a faster, safer, and more productive email experience. Mozilla designed Thunderbird to prevent viruses and to stop junk mail so you can get back to reading your mail.

Established in July, 2003, with start-up support from America Online's Netscape division, the Mozilla Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project.

Mozilla’s software is available as a free download numerous platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

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Go to http://www.mozilla.org and select Download Thunderbird 1.0.2 :

Perform the software download and run the executable file. Selecting Standard installation displays the following confirmation page. Confirm to begin installation.

Confirmation of a successful installation:

When Thunderbird first starts, it will search your workstation and give you the option of importing Account Settings and Address Book info from existing Outlook, Outlook Express and other Mail Clients. At this time choose – Don’t import anything. We have some housekeeping to take care of first:

Thunderbird will start and you will immediately be given the opportunity to add an Email account. Note that you can come back to this screen at a later time to establish alternate Blog and Newsgroup accounts. Downloaded entries going into these alternate accounts will be isolated from your standard mail Inbox by routing these message entries directly into independent folders. Let’s now create the primary Email account. Click on Next:

Enter the Mail Account information. Note: the account and listed phone number are fictitious and are only used as examples:

Now, select the Incoming and Outgoing Mail Servers. I like to uncheck the box to facilitate the isolation of this account’s mail into its own directory. If you will only have one and only one mail account on this PC, then you might choose to leave this box checked. In that case, all Mail will be directed to the Local Folders account and sub-folders:

Enter your Incoming and Outgoing Usernames. They will likely be the same.

Now, give the Account a name that you will recognize should you need to perform Account updates. The default is usually just fine.

Confirm all your settings are correct. Uncheck the Download messages now at this time. We’ll get back to them later.

You will be prompted for an account password for sending and receiving mail. Enter and optionally have the Password Manager remember this entry:

You will be presented with an alert regarding saved passwords. Hit OK to acknowledge:

Now, to customize. Select Tools, then Accounts and then Server Settings under the Account “Username” that you just created. You may choose to keep many of the defaults or you may change some of them at your discretion. I will describe several updates that you might want to consider.

Many of you will want to check for new mail every 3 to 5 minutes instead of the default of 10 minutes. Once you hit OK, mail will automatically be checked and saved according to this pre-defined schedule:

*** Optional Advanced Feature ***

You may, although you are by no means required to change the local mail archive directory. The default (i.e. C:\Documents and Settings\Glenn\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\2l8z7o88.default\Mail\mail.comcast.net) is a bit to obscure for me. I use E:\Tbird Mail\glenn. You might also choose to change the Local Folder directory setting as well (i.e. E:\TBird Mail\local folders). All mail folders and message files will reside in these directories. Since these new directories will likely not exist, be sure to select the Make New Folders option as you Browse and Select these alternate Local directories.

Important! You will need to exit and reload Thunderbird to enable these new Local directories. Should you have Inbox, Sent or other folder messages, you will want to copy the folders and files from the default directory and overwrite those in the newly created alternate Local directory. If no files exist, this is not necessary. You should do this after you have closed down, but prior to restarting the Thunderbird application.

Once you have restarted Thunderbird and verified that the directory update has been successful, you may delete the original default Local mail folders and files.

***
You will initially see a Help Menu notice on your Mail Workspace. After you read it and note the Help options, pull this screen all the way down to hide it:

Independently, use any Text Editor to create and save a signature.txt file (i.e.gfsig.txt). As a suggestion, you might consider saving this in an E:/Tbird Mail/”user”/Signatures directory.

Now let’s go back in to Tools and then Account Settings for the Mail Account user that has been set up (i.e. ). Browse to and Attach the signature file.

When you create a new message (Write Icon or File, New and then Message), you will see the signature automatically inserted at the end of the Message Workspace.

Go back to the Account Settings Menu and select Composition & Addressing. I like to start my reply and signature above the listed and quoted message that I am replying to. There are other message formatting options possible. Investigate and select your preferences:

Next, let’s setup Junk Mail Filtering. Identifying and classifying Junk Mail is a learned trait of the software. After time, most Junk mail will be automatically identified, classified, migrated to a Junk Folder and eventually deleted from your system.

From the Tools Menu select Junk Mail Controls. After reading the Junk Mail setup instructions, select OK to continue:

Select the Junk Mail Settings tab and then configure as desired. I suggest having all mail that has been automatically or manually identified as Junk, be immediately migrated to a predefined Junk Folder. If you do not manually remove these messages from this Folder, I set them up to be automatically deleted after 14 days.

Next, select the Adaptive Controls tab and Enable adaptive junk mail detection:

You have to teach Thunderbird to reason correctly. It is a quick learner.

Most incoming Junk Mail will automatically appear in your Junk Folder. You will want to periodically check this folder to ensure that messages are being categorized correctly. If a Junk message does get by the filter and shows up in your Inbox, be sure to highlight the message and then select the “Junk” toolbar option. The message will then be marked with a Garbage Can icon next to it as noted below. If configured as previously suggested, these messages will be immediately redirected to the Junk Folder. If mail is mistakenly marked as Junk, highlight the message and then select the “Not Junk” toolbar option to clear the Junk Mail status:

Let’s now create a rule based Filter. From the Tools Menu, select, New, define the Filter and create a File Folder as a migration repository if desired:

Highlight the Filter just created and select Run Now. All mail messages that meet the selection criteria will be acted upon. In our example, all message that have TBird in Subject, will be moved to the Inbox/TBird directory:

You can now verify that the test TBird messages have been redirected to the designated TBird folder. From this point forward, all new incoming messages will be subject to this and all other Enabled Filters:

Now that Thunderbird has been configured, you do have the option of importing all Folder, Messages and Address Book information from other mail clients that reside on your PC. From the Tools Menu, select Import. Let’s first Import our existing Outlook Express Address Book:

Select the Application to import from:

Notification of a successful Address Book import:

Repeat the process to Import Messages:

When complete, you will be able to confirm a successful Folder and Message import Folders and Messages can be optionally moved within Thunderbird Folders as desired:

I’ll introduce you to one last item regarding the classification of messages. From Tools, Options, Display, note the pre-defined Message Classifications and Color Coding. If you’d prefer different labels, simply change them here:

Now, go back to one of the Message folders (i.e. Inbox). You may right click on any message and assign it to any of the pre-defined Classifications. Once classified, the selected message listing will turn from black to the designated Classification color:

You can select on messages within a Classification from the Desktop View menu.

Your Thunderbird configuration is all set. You can create new messages from the Main menu New, Message selection or directly from the Write Toolbar entry:

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