Thunderbird
Thunderbird is the default email application that is easy to set up and customize. It is also loaded with great features and online security.
Thunderbird has some of the best features for an email client. The online help for Thunderbird is great because everything is organized by "Help Topics."
Thunderbird is very easy to setup because it now has an Automatic Account Configuration wizard. If you prefer, you can still setup your email account manually.
Automatic Account Configuration
Setting up a new account with Thunderbird is very easy task. All you need to do is provide your user name and password for your email provider and your email address. Thunderbird will search online through a database and determine if it can setup your account automatically.
The first time you open Thunderbird, you will be prompted to create a profile. If you already have an email address then click the button, "Skip this and use my existing email" as shown in the lower left dialog box. Then you'll be asked to provide details about your email account in the dialog box shown in the lower right.
Setting up a new account with Thunderbird is very easy task. All you need to do is provide your user name and password for your email provider and your email address. Thunderbird will search online through a database and determine if it can setup your account automatically.
The first time you open Thunderbird, you will be prompted to create a profile. If you already have an email address then click the button, "Skip this and use my existing email" as shown in the lower left dialog box. Then you'll be asked to provide details about your email account in the dialog box shown in the lower right.
When you click the Continue button, Thunderbird will look up the email provider and attempt to determine the server settings.
In the example in the dialog box above, the provider data has been used to fill in the account details and configure the services offered:
You have the option to choose either IMAP or POP as your incoming mail protocol. IMAP and POP are the standard protocols for retrieving emails. IMAP, the more modern protocol, allows you to store messages on the mail server and on your local machine at the same time. The POP protocol only allows messages to be stored locally. Email providers may provide access by either the IMAP or POP protocol, or may support both.
All you need to do next is click the Done button. To finish setting up your account automatically.
- Incoming mail: IMAP on imap.aol.com, using Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
- Outgoing mail: SMTP on smtp.aol.com, using STARTTLS
You have the option to choose either IMAP or POP as your incoming mail protocol. IMAP and POP are the standard protocols for retrieving emails. IMAP, the more modern protocol, allows you to store messages on the mail server and on your local machine at the same time. The POP protocol only allows messages to be stored locally. Email providers may provide access by either the IMAP or POP protocol, or may support both.
All you need to do next is click the Done button. To finish setting up your account automatically.
Manual Account Configuration
To manually configure an account, you will need to have the following details which can be supplied by your email provider.
- incoming mail server and port (for example, "pop.example.com" and port 110 or "imap.example.com" and port 143)
- outgoing mail server and port (for example, "smtp.example.com" and port 25)
- security setting for the connection with the server (for example, "STARTTLS" or "SSL/TLS" and whether or not to use secure authentication)
To display the menu across the top, right-click in the dark area and check "Menu Bar."
You will then be ready to use Thunderbird to send and receive emails.
After you use Thunderbird for a while and get used to the basic features, you'll want to explore and discover how powerful Thunderbird is. You can customize it to look the way you want. You can download and install Add-ons just like you install Add-ons in Firefox and Chrome browsers. You can download and install your favorite theme. You can customize your alert messages and sounds. You can block unwanted emails and/or SPAM email. You can set a time to release emails for you. These are just a few of the things that Thunderbird is capable of doing. I haven't even mentioned anything about it supporting instant messaging and chat using IRC, XMPP, Twitter, and Google Talk. You can also monitor your favorite news feeds and blogs. You can integrate calendars into Thunderbird and export and share them with your friends or work colleagues.
If you have never used an email client before, I will include some pictures below to show how to open an email and an attachment within the email message. I will also illustrate how to create an email message to send to a friend.
Opening an Email
After you open Thunderbird and let it download all your emails, click on an email to open it. If you don't see any emails, then make sure you have "Inbox" selected on the left side of your screen.
Notice below, that your email will open in a new tab. The new tabbed emails allow you to switch back-and-forth between emails very quickly. Be sure to close your tabs before you close Thunderbird. I have seen someone's Thunderbird with so many tabs open that it hid the Inbox tab.
Notice below, that your email will open in a new tab. The new tabbed emails allow you to switch back-and-forth between emails very quickly. Be sure to close your tabs before you close Thunderbird. I have seen someone's Thunderbird with so many tabs open that it hid the Inbox tab.
I used my primary email account, from Gmail, to send my secondary email account a short and simple email with an attachment. You can double-click the attached file to open it or click the Save button on the lower right to save the attached file to your computer. I'm going to double-click the attached file to show you what happens.
Double-clicking on the attached file created a pop-up dialog box. It allows you to open the attachment or save the attachment. I'm going to open the attachment.
I did not maximize the opened attached file to let you see the email is still open in the background. You now can work with the attached file as you normally would. You can print it if you wanted too. If you have a document, such as a Word compatible document, and you make changes to it, then it must be saved to your computer to keep the changes made to the file.
Creating an Email
There are multiple ways to start creating a new message. I like adding my favorite buttons to my task-bar across the top. I right-click the bar and drag my favorite buttons to the task-bar.
I start a new message by clicking the Write button on the task-bar.
I start a new message by clicking the Write button on the task-bar.
When the new message screen appears you need to type an email address in the To: section and write a brief description of the email in the Subject section.
Then write your email in the body section. You have a lot of features as you create your email. It's like a simple word processor because you can bold, underline, italicize, change the colors, of your fonts. You can even change your font type and much more.
When you're finished with the email, click on the send button.
Please use Thunderbird's "Help Topics" if you can't understand something about the program.
You can add add-ons to Thunderbird to help you customize it the way you like. You can look at their "Thunderbird Features" to see additional features that I didn't mention on the webpage.
You can add add-ons to Thunderbird to help you customize it the way you like. You can look at their "Thunderbird Features" to see additional features that I didn't mention on the webpage.