Thunderbird is an email client designed to enable users to receive mail from multiple accounts simultaneously, providing several features including adaptive junk mail settings and offline email encryption.
Tags are another useful way of organizing messages within the message pane, appearing as color-coded icons once created.
Getting Started
Starting Thunderbird can be fairly straightforward for users with existing email accounts such as Gmail. Simply provide your full name, email address and mailbox password – Thunderbird takes care of everything else for you.
If you are setting up a custom email account, however, the manual configuration process must be carried out in addition to using a wizard. Simply click the Configure manually link on the same page where the new account wizard opens to manually enter all incoming and outgoing mail server settings before entering your password and providing all other required information.
After configuring both incoming and outgoing servers, you can move on to customizing other aspects of Thunderbird email client. For instance, you can set your signature or determine whether it should sync to another location like an online service; additionally you can check an option that makes Thunderbird remember your password so it won’t have to be entered every time you launch the app.
Finding Messages
Thunderbird stores messages in two folders called Mail and IMAPMail. When opening Thunderbird, new messages are checked automatically or manually by selecting File > Get Messages For and Current Account (where Current Account is the account highlighted in Folder Pane).
Emails arrive automatically in your Inbox, where they can be easily organized and managed using filters such as Unread button which displays only unread messages, label views such as Important, Work, Personal and To Do which only display those marked with one of those categories, etc.
Use Thunderbird’s search function to quickly and efficiently find messages by typing one word or multiple words into the field provided, or enclosing all words with quotation marks so they will search within messages for all occurrences of them. In addition, Thunderbird allows searching within specific folders or mailboxes as well as providing a system for linking large files instead of attaching them, as well as basic support for HTML template messages.
Replying to a Message
To respond to a message you received, select it from the Folders pane and open its contents in the left-hand Contents pane, while its body appears in the right-hand Message Pane. Type your response directly in this latter section.
Thunderbird will automatically create a draft message addressed to all recipients when you select Reply; however, if only responding to one person directly using Send, simply use that button instead.
Thunderbird makes writing email easier by saving your known addresses in its Address Book and offering them up as autocomplete results as you type them; for example if you type “j”, it will find Jane Doe from your list and autofill her for you – or press Enter/Tab if that option does not provide sufficient matches.
After you finish writing your message, Thunderbird will automatically check it for spelling errors and display any that it finds in the Check Spelling dialog box. Errors will be underlined in red with squiggly lines to indicate their need for correction.
Organizing Messages
To sort messages your way, either click on a column heading in the message list pane or use View -> Sort By. Message grouping applies per folder so any settings made for one will not affect any other folders.
If you receive many emails from a certain person and would like Thunderbird to organize them into separate folders for them, creating child folders and setting message filters that direct new mail into them is an ideal way to organize. From there you can perform actions such as deleting or archiving messages from that person.
Thunderbird makes organizing your emails simple by providing pre-defined tags as well as user-created ones, but you can add your own. For instance, you might tag messages with “birthday” so as not to forget an important date – and view all such messages by clicking on their label in either Folders pane or emails list panel. Tags can also be used with filters to perform similar actions on multiple messages at the same time.
Deleting Messages
Thunderbird provides a wysiwyg editor for creating messages, enabling you to format it with either HTML (the default setting) or plain text. Furthermore, Thunderbird supports various attachment types and will format them automatically according to your delivery email settings.
Organizing messages can be achieved by moving them between folders in the Folders pane or using tags – descriptive colored words you use to organize group of messages into categories. For instance, creating an Important tag would quickly and efficiently categorize urgent ones.
Many IMAP servers support a feature that allows you to delete messages directly from the server when you delete them in your email client, providing peace of mind that messages you delete have truly been taken off the server. This feature can be invaluable if you need assurances that deleted items have indeed been erased from storage.
Unfortunately, some users of Thunderbird have reported issues where messages will no longer delete. This can make using the software very challenging. To address this problem, it would be prudent to update Thunderbird and remove any third-party add-ons which may be interfering with its functionality.