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Thunderbird hints and tips

This page contains some tips and hints about using Thunderbird. It assumes that you have carried out the basic configuration according to the notes elsewhere on our site.

There are two commands used for configuring Thunderbird. Settings that can vary from one account to another are configured using the Account Settings coimmand. For global settings that apply to all the accounts use the Options command in the Tools menu on a PC, or the Preferences command in the Thunderbird menu on a Mac. Where the notes refer to the Options command, Mac users should look at the Preferences. If you have only one account (your own personal account) the division between "Account settings" and "Options/Preferences" may seem arbitrary.

POP or IMAP

POP and IMAP are two different protocols for accessing your email. In the past most users have used POP mail. POP downloads your messages and stores them on your Mac/PC; IMAP leaves the messages on the server. In POP if you file a message in a mail folder it is held on your Mac/PC; in IMAP the mail folders are all on the server.

The advantages of IMAP mail are:

  • You can read your mail from more than one location and see messages that you have filed and copies of messages you have sent when working on a different computer
  • Your mail is stored on the server and regularly backed up
  • WebMail is an IMAP system, so if you use Thunderbird in IMAP mode you will be compatible with WebMail

What are Extensions and should we use them?

Thunderbird is an open source program and a large community of users and developers has an interest in its future. Many new features are developed by people both inside and outside the core team, and these new features are not always immediately incorporated into the main program, but are made available as extensions.

Typically, you would download the extension you want from the web and save it on your desktop. Then open the Extensions window by choosing Extensions from Thunderbird's Tools menu, and drag the downloaded file into the Extensions window.

On the whole we do not recommend using extensions unless they are absolutely essential for what you need to do. Older extensions may not work with the current version of Thunderbird, or may suddenly cease to work with the next upgrade to Thunderbird. If you have installed extensions and come to rely on them, you need to remember them if ever you have to set yourself up on another computer, or if your hard disk crashes and your system has to be re-installed.

See the Mozilla web-site for more information about extensions.

Why is Thunderbird slow in POP mode?

If Thunderbird is slow to open your INBOX and slow to open or delete messages one possible explanation is that F-Secure is taking too much time to scan the mail file. You can speed this up by ensuring that you have installed all the current hotfixes for F-Secure.

See the F-Secure help pages for further information.

But still you will slow down Thunderbird if you allow your INBOX to get too large. Please file your messages in folders. Also, do not leave messages on the server if you are using Thunderbird in POP mode. If you need to access your mail from more than one location (which is the usual reason for leaving messages on the server) you should use IMAP mail.

Local Folders

In addition to your own email account(s) there is a special "account" included in every Thunderbird installation. This is called "Local folders". It doesn't have the settings that your email accounts have. As the name suggests, Local Folders are held on your PC or Mac, and are independent of your various IMAP or POP accounts.

The Inbox under Local Folders is sometimes referred to as the Global Inbox. If you use POP mail you must decide whether the messages you download should be put into the Global Inbox or into an Inbox associated with your email account.

If you use IMAP mail your folders are primarily stored on the server, not locally, but you should use Local Folders to store messages which are not required urgently on a daily basis and so do not need to be made available in IMAP folders. You have much more diskspace on your local Mac or PC than is available for you to use on the IMAP server, so periodical housekeeping is needed, and one way of saving space on the server is to drag some of your IMAP folders down into the Local Folders account.

One of the steps in the configuration of Thunderbird is to specify where on your computer the Local Folders are stored. The default is to put them in an obscure directory buried within "Applications Data". It is recommended that you change this to store Local Folders within your "My Documents", as this will make backup and restoration more straightforward.

Mail folders

Whether you are using IMAP or POP mail, it is important to keep your INBOX small. This means you should file the messages that you want to keep. In IMAP mail you don't want to build up too large a number of folders, so it is best to keep your filing system simple, not to break it down into minute thematic divisions. Apart from making the software work more efficiently, a simple filing system has the advantage that you are more likely to use it.

All users will develop their own filing system according to taste and the demands of their work. If there is no obvious filing system arising from the demands of your work, you should consider a simple chronological system, with a folder for each month, with perhaps one or two other folders for messages that are clearly identifiable as belonging to a category of their own. For example if you are organizing a conference you might decide to file all messages from conference participants in a folder of their own, separate from your general chronolgical filing system.

A chronological filing system might not seem very clever, but it is much better than no system at all. Furthermore, there are ways in which you can organize your messages within your folders. Techniques for organizing and retrieving messages within folders are described elsewhere in this document.

Folders and subfolders

If you are using IMAP mail it is essential to make a change to the default settings. If this was not done when Thunderbird was installed you will encounter difficulties when managing your folders. You can check as follows:

  • Choose Account settings from the Tools menu
  • Click on Server settings
  • Click the Advanced button
  • Make sure that the option Server supports folders that contain sub-folders and messages is turned OFF (unticked)
  • Click OK
  • If you have more than one account set up, ensure that this option is turned OFF for all of them

The reason for this is that our IMAP servers treat folders differently depending on whether they contain messages or subfolders. In Unix terms, folders containing subfolders are directories while folders containing messages are files. The consequence is that whenever you create a folder you have to specify which sort of folder it is.

Also, whenever you create a folder you have to specify where it is located - that is, which folder is its parent.

Creating a folder and subfolder

In this example, we'll create a folder called "Conference" with a subfolder called "Speakers". Although we will think of "Conference" as a folder, it can also be considered as a subfolder of your account.

First create the folder within your IMAP account:

  • Right-click on your IMAP account in the left-hand part of the screen
  • From the pop-up menu choose New Folder
  • Type in the name of the folder, eg "Conference"
  • Under Create as a subfolder of choose your account as the parent
  • Choose the Folders only option
  • Click OK

Now you can create a subfolder within your new folder:

  • Right-click on your folder
  • Choose New Subfolder from the pop-up menu
  • Type in the name of your subfolder, eg "Speakers"
  • Under Create as a subfolder of choose your your folder as the parent
  • Choose the Messages only option
  • Click OK

You should beware of including a forward slash character (/) in your folder name. If you do, then Thunderbird will create a folder and a sub-folder. So if you specify the folder name as 2011/March Thunderbird will create a folder called 2011, with a sub-folder called March. This may not be what you intended.

The layout of the Thunderbird screen

The usual way of laying out the Thunderbird screen (Classic view) is to show the folders in a tree arrangement in the left-hand pane, with the currently selected folder open in the right-hand pane, with the message list above and the message pane below. You can make changes to this if you want to.

  • To hide the message pane: choose Layout from the Tools menu and select Message Pane - and do the same if you want to restore the Message pane
  • To increase or decrease the size of the panes: point at the grey border between the folder list and the message list and when the mouse-pointer changes to a two-headed arrow drag right or left. Do the same to drag the border between the message list and the message pane up or down

Selecting, deleting, moving and copying

Thunderbird uses standard Windows/Mac techniques for selecting, deleting, moving and copying folders and messages. Here is a summary of some of the more useful techniques:

  • To select a message: point and click on the message header in the message list. This will highlight the message and if you have the Message Pane turned on the message will be displayed
  • To delete messagesa: select one or more messages and press the Delete key or click the Delete button in the toolbar
  • To move a message to a different folder: make sure the target folder is visible in the folder list on the left, then point at the message in the message list and drag it across to the target folder
  • To select several messages at once: click on one message, then press the Control key and keep it down while clicking on subsequent messages
  • To select a block of messages: click on the first message in the block, and then press the Shift key and click on the last message in the block
  • To de-select one of the highlighted messages: keep the Control key down while clicking on the messageTo select all the messages in the open mail folder: click somewhere in the message list and then press Control+A
  • To move several messages at once: select the messages and then point at one of them, press the mouse-button and drag across to the target folder
  • To copy messages (rather than moving them): drag the messages across to the target folder as though you were moving the messages, but before you release the mouse-button press and hold down the Control key; release the mouse-button and then release the Control key

In addition to using the mouse to drag messages to a new location there are < b>Move To and Copy To commands in the menus. Either right-click on the message(s) and choose from the pop-up menu, or select the message(s) and use the command from the Message menu.

You can also move folders by dragging them to a new location in the folder list. You can move a folder from one account to another, including moving it to or from the Local Folders. You can also move a folder into another folder, providing the target folder is one which has been created to contain subfolders.

Local recipients: can you leave off "@st-andrews.ac.uk"?

In Thunderbird, in the default set-up, you have to give the full address, with @st-andrews.ac.uk.

If you have set up Thunderbird to use the University Directory it will try to auto-complete the address, which you need to be careful about. Make sure it has not auto-completed the address incorrectly.

Another way is to use a setting in the advanced options:

  • Choose Options from the Tools menu
  • Click on Advanced and within the Advanced options click the General tab
  • Click the Config Editor button
  • In the filter box type: mydomain
  • The preference mail.identity.default.autocompleteToMyDomain will be listed with the value "false". Double-click on it to change the value to "true".
  • Close the Config editor window by clicking the cross in the top corner
  • Click OK

Organizing and retrieving your messages within folders

Sorting your messages

By default your messages are stored in date/time order with the most recent usually at the bottom of the list. You can change this order by clicking on the grey heading of the column that want to use for sorting. For example, if you want to see all the messages with the same subject together click the "Subject" column header. This will sort the messages into alphabetical order of subject (ignoring the "Re:" or "Fwd" that you sometimes get in the subject-line of messages which are replies to other messages or which have been forwarded to you.

If the folder is already sorted according to a particular column and you then click the same heading again, the order of the sort will be reversed. So if the folder is sorted by date with the latest at the bottom, clicking the "Date" heading will put the latest at the top of the list.

If you change the ordering of your INBOX you should always revert to sorting by date when you have finished. Incoming messages are placed in their position according to the current ordering of the folder. If the folder is sorted by subject, new messages will be placed alphabetically according to their Subject line. This means that you might not notice when new messages arrive if you are expecting them to appear at the bottom of the message list.

Message threads

Another way of grouping messages together by subject is to click the "Thread" icon which is the leftmost column heading - it looks like a speech-balloon. If you click this, all the messages belonging to the same thread (ie with the same Subject line) will be grouped together. The advantage of using the threading option is that you can then "collapse" a thread so that only the first message of the thread is shown in the message list. This simplifies the message list and makes it easier to scroll up and down to find messages you are looking for.

  • >When a thread has been "collapsed" there is a little plus sign beside the Subject in the messagelist
  • Clicking the plus sign will expand the thread and show all the messages; the plus sign then becomes a minus sign
  • Expanded threads can be collapsed by clicking the minus sign.

If your message list is sorted by date, the threads are positioned in the list according to the date/time of the first message in the thread.

Add additional columns to the message list

  • Click the little "columns" icon at the right-hand end of the column headings at the top of your message list
  • This will give you a menu from which you can choose which columns to display.

Re-arranging the columns in the message list

You can re-arrange the columns in the list, for example if you want the "Sender" column to come first (on the left of the list).

  • Point at the grey column-heading that you want to move and drag it left or right to the new location, and then release the mouse-button.

Message labels

Labelling messages offers a way of categorising your messages which supplements whatever system of folders you have devised. Labelling a message changes the colour of its entry in the message list. There are five different colours you can use, and each colour has a default meaning (Important, Work, Personal, To Do and Later). You can change the colours and also change the meanings attached to them.

To label a message

  • Right-click on the entry in the message list, and choose Label from the pop-up menu
  • Choose the label that you want to use from the sub-menu.

To change the meanings of the labels

  • Choose Options from the Tools menu, and click on Display and then on Labels
  • You can now change the text in the boxes: Select the text that is there and delete it, and then type your new label text - usually something short
  • You can change the colours by clicking on the colour boxes to display a colour palette, and choosing a new colour
  • Then click OK.

In addition to marking the message by colour, you can have the text associated with the labels displayed in the message list. See above for instructions for adding columns to the message list. This means that you can sort the list by label, and so bring all the messages with a particular label together.

If you move a labelled message into another folder it loses its label.

Read or Unread messages

When a new message arrives in your INBOX it is marked as unread. Unread messages are indicated in several ways:

  • The message entry in the folder list is shown in bold
  • If you have chosen to display the "Read" column in the folder list, it contains a large green dot; when the message has been read the dot is reduced in size
  • If a folder contains it will appear in bold in the list of folders on the left of the screen; the number beside the folder will indicate the number of unread messages that it contains

If you are displaying the message pane underneath the message list, a message will be marked as read as soon as it is displayed in the message pane. You can prevent this by telling Thuinderbird to wait a number of seconds before marking a message as read.

  • Choose Options from the Tools menu and click on Advanced and then General
  • In the General tab put a tick in the box beside Wait
  • Type in the number of seconds that you want to wait before the message is marked as read
  • Click OK

You can put in a high number like 1800, which means the message will have to be displayed for half-an-hour before being marked as read.

Marking and flagging

To mark a message manually as read:

  • Right click on the message entry in the list and choose Mark from the pop-up menu
  • You now have the following options:
    • As Read - mark the current message as read
    • As Unread - if the message is currently marked as read there will be a tick showing in the pop-up menu and you can reverse this by choosing As Read again
    • Thread As Read - mark the whole thread as read
    • As Read by Date - you will be asked for a start and end date, and all messages dated within that period will be marked as read
    • All Read - all messages in the folder will be marked as read

The Mark sub-menu also includes the Flag option. This will put a little flag icon in the message entry. You will only see the result of flagging a message if you opt to display the Flag column.

The other items in the Mark menu refer to Junk mail. Thunderbird's junk mail features are discussed elsewhere.

Searching for messages

  • Choose Find from the Edit menu and then choose Search Messages
  •  In the drop-down list labelled Search for messages in choose the folder within which you wish to search. You can choose the account name, which means the search will include all the folders in the account
  • Make sure the Search Subfolders box is ticked
  • Enter your search criteria:
    • In the first box choose which of the message parts you are searching
    • In the second box choose "contains" or "doesn't contain", "is" or "isn't" or "is before" or "is after" -- the options in this drop-down list will vary depending on which part of the message you are searching
    • The third box will either be a drop-down list from which you can choose an option, or it will be a free text box where you should type the text you want to search for
  • If you have more than one search criterion, click the plus (+) button to display another line of boxes
    • If you want to cancel the last criterion in the list, click the minus (-) button
  • If you have more than one criterion you must specify whether you are looking for messages which match all or any of the criteria
  • Click Search

If you are searching for messages sent to a certain recipient, choose To or cc rather than just To.

You can search for text in the body of messages, but it is likely to take a long time, so it might be better to do that only if you are restricting the search to one folder.

Attachments

Thunderbird keeps the attachment within the message until you explicitly detach it. If you don't detach the attachment, it will stay in your mail folder until the message itself is deleted.

There are two consequences of this:

  • If you receive a lot of attachments your mail folders will quickly grow large
  • If you receive a message with an attachment and forward it to someone else, the original attachment will accompany the message. Even if you have modified and saved the document the attachment will be unchanged, without your modifications.

Saving, detaching and deleting attachments

When you receive a message with attachments, they will be listed in a box at the foot of the message. You can do any of the following:

  • Double-click on an attachment to open it up - you need to have the appropriate software to do this, for example Microsoft Word in order to open Word documents. If you modify the file, choose Save As (not Save) to save your changes, and choose an appropriate place to store the modified file
  • Drag the attachment onto your desktop to save it there to open it later
  • Right-click on the attachment and choose Save and then select the folder to save it to. If you do this the attachment will remain in the message
  • Right-click on the attachment and choose Detach. First you will be asked to select the folder to save it to, and then you will be asked to confirm that you really want to remove it from the message. This action cannot be reversed
  • Right-click on the attachment and choose Delete You will be asked to confirm that you really want to remove the attachment because it is unreversible
  • If there are several attachments to the message you can choose Detach all or Delete all to handle all of them at once

When saving or detaching an attachment you should consider where to store it among your documents. You can choose a default folder for storing attachments.

  • Choose Options from the Tools menu
  • Click on Attachments
  • You can opt to choose a location for saving all attachments, but it may be better practice to choose the Ask me where to save every file option

If you do select a location for saving all attachments, it does not mean that attachments are automatically saved there, only that if you save an an attachment it will be put there.

Displaying attachments inline

There is an option in the View menu for displaying attachments inline. On the whole it is better to have this turned off, because you might want the option of deciding first whether or not you want to see an attached image. Also, displaying a large attachment inline will slow things up.

Attachments on the Mac: why can people not open the documents I send them?

Thunderbird on the Mac cannot attach and Word documents successfully unless they have a suffix. PC users are accustomed to files having a suffix. Word documents on a PC typically have the suffix .doc, as in essay.doc but Mac users often do not use this convention. If you want to send a Word document as an attachment from Thunderbird on a Mac you will first need to rename the file to add to its name a dot followed by doc

If you don't include the suffix your recipient's email program will not recognise the document as a Word document, and they will not be able to open it by double-clicking on it. The document should be fine, but it will be harder for your correspondent to access it. The same applies to other types of document: for Excel files you should add the suffix .xls

For other reasons unconnected with Thunderbird, however, you must avoid sending an attachment with more than one dot in the filename. An attachment called something like essay.july2006.doc will be treated as suspicious by the virus scanner, and will be quarantined.

Forwarding and re-directing

Always be careful when forwarding or re-directing messages. Consider whether the original sender would be happy with their message being passed on in this way.

Why can my recipients not see messages I have forwarded to them?

The reason may be that you are forwarding messages as attachments. This is the default setting in Thunderbird. The forwarded message is there, but the recipient needs to look for it as an attachment, since it is not displayed inline (ie within the message pane).

To put this right:

  • Choose Options from the Tools menu
  • Click on Composition and then on General
  • In the drop-down list labelled Forward messages: choose Inline

Is there a Re-direct command in Thunderbird?

When you re-direct a message the final recipient sees it as having come from the original sender. When you forward a message it appears to the recipient to have come from you. Eudora had a Re-direct command which people found useful. (PINE has the same facility, with the Bounce command.)

Thunderbird has no Re-direct command, although it is available if you use the MailRedirect extension which you can install from the Mozilla web-site.

One reason for wanting to re-direct rather than forward a message is that if the final recipient uses the Reply command the response will go to the original sender rather than to the person who forwarded the message. This can be achieved in Thunderbird (without installing the extension) by putting a Reply-To address in the message header when forwarding it.

Installing additional spelling dictionaries

Thunderbird starts off with just the US English dictionary. If you want a different one (for instance UK English) you have to install it using the Extensions window.

  • Choose Options from the Tools menu
  • Click Composition and then Spelling
  •  If the dictionary you want is in the drop-down list select it; otherwise click Download More Dictionaries
  • This will take you to a web page on the Mozilla site: click the dictionary you want and save it on your desktop - see below for suggestions if you find that your browser doesn't offer you the option of saving the dictionary on your desktop
  • Go back to Thunderbird and cancel the Options window and choose Extensions from the Tools menu
  • Drag the file that you downloaded into the extensions window
  • Click Install and the dictionary will be very quickly installed
  • Close the Extensions window and go back to the Options. You should find the new dictionary listed in the drop-down list

Problem downloading and saving the dictionary

If you use Firefox you may find that it does not offer you the possibility of downloading the dictionary: it may install it, or try to install it, as a Firefox not a Thunderbird extension. If this happens it may look as though the dictionary has been installed, but it will not appear in Thunderbird. You can force it to download and save the dictionary by right-clicking on the dictionary and choosing Save link as from the pop-up menu.

Templates

Templates are skeletons containing text that you want to use and re-use for many messages. Creating a template means you don't have to type the same thing every time. Eudora refers to templates as "Stationery".

Creating and using a template

  • Click Write to open the composition window
  • Type in the text that you want to include in the template
  • In addition to text in the body of the message you can include the subject of the message and also include any recipients who are to receive a copy or a blind copy. You can also specify a "Reply-to" address
  • Once you have completed the template choose Save As from the File menu and then Template
  • Your template will be saved in your Templates folder
  • The template will remain open and you can either close it or complete it and send it

To use your template:

  • Click on the Templates folder in your folder list on the left of the screen
  • Double click on the template that you want to use to open it up in a composition window
  • Complete the message by adding (or removing) text from the template
  • When the message is complete, click Send in the usual way
  • The message will go, and the original template will be left int the Templates folder

The QuickText Extension (for an equivalent of "Reply with")

Thunderbird's Templates feature is not as rich as Eudora's Stationery featurE. For example, you can use stationery as the basis for a reply, using Eudora's Reply with command. There is no equivalent of Reply with in Thunderbird. However there is an extension which enhances the Template function in Thunderbird, providing an equivalent of Reply with.

For details of the QuickText extension go to the Mozilla web-site.

Replying

Why does my message come after the quoted message?

If you include the original message in your reply the default behaviour is for Thunderbird to insert your own reply at the end, after the quoted message. If you want to change this behaviour, you can change the settings as follows:

  • Choose Account Settings from the Tools menu and click on the Composition and Addressing section under the account you want to modify
  • Put a tick in the box labelled Automatically quote the original message when replying
  • Choose start my reply above the quote from the drop-down list

When including the original message you should delete any unnecessary text - for example, if the message already contains other messages you might consider deleting some of them. It is sometimes useful to have the whole dialogue contained in the single message, but it is often just confusing for your recipient. Also, if you are copying your reply to someone else you need to consider whether it is appropriate for your correspondent's original message to be included: would the writer of the message be happy for what they had written to you to be sent elsewhere?

Giving the date and time of a quoted message in a reply

When you are sending a reply and quoting the original message within your reply it would be useful sometimes to include a note of the date and time of the quoted message. For example, it might say something like this: Jack Spratt wrote the following on 10/4/2007 17:35

To make Thunderbird do this you need to create a user preferences file called user.js. You need to know where your Thunderbird profile is stored. Usually the path on a windows machine is similar to the following: C:\Documents and Settings\uname\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\xyzxyzxyz.default (where uname is the user's username and xyzxyzxyz.default represents the user's Thunderbird profile).

If the file already exists,n the user's profile edit it with a text editor such as Notepad and add the code below, otherwise create a new user.js file using a text editor and include the code below.

// Change the reply header
// 0 - No Reply-Text
// 1 - "[Author] wrote:"
// 2 - "On [date] [author] wrote:"
// 3 - User-defined reply header. Use the prefs below in conjunction with this:user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_type", 3);

// If you set 3 for the pref above then you may set the following prefs.
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote", "%s wrote the following");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_ondate", "on %s");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_separator", " ");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_colon", ":");
// The end result will be [authorwrote][separator][ondate][colon]

This file should then be saved into the users Thunderbird profiles folder. You need to restart Thunderbird before it takes effect.

 

Acknowledgements

This page of hints and tips has been assembled with help from a number of sources including: Andy Eccles (History) Natalia Biletska (Modern Languages & English) Ray Parkinson (IT Service Desk) Peter McKiernan (Management)

If you have suggestions and corrections to contribute, please contact the IT Service Desk.