Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client

use Thunderbird | junk e-mail filter | never trust attachments | password retrieval | profiles | RSS feeds | secrecy | signatures | maintenance | Lightning extension

security features

junk e-mail filter

You can sort out SPAM from your inbox by using the junk mail controls. You can set the filters to be program-wide or per e-mail account.

per e-mail account

1. Click on Tools then select Account Settings.
2. Click on Junk Settings beneath the e-mail account you wish to make changes to.
3. Place a checkmark next to Enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account and Move new junk messages to:.
4. Click on the OK button when done.

program-wide

1. Click on Tools then on Options.
2. Click on the Security icon along the top.
3. Select the Junk folder tab.
4. Place a check mark next to When I mark messages as junk:.
5. Click on OK to finish.

Make sure to check the Junk folder periodically to make sure it is not tagging legitimate e-mails. Try going into the Junk folder and marking the e-mails as Not Junk before resetting the filter. If there are many e-mails marked as SPAM but you know they are not then you may need to reset the filter. Remember that you'll need to retrain the filter from scratch so try leaving this as a last resort.

to reset the SPAM filter

1. Click on Tools then on Options.
2. Click on the Security icon along the top.
3. Select the Junk folder tab.
4. Click the Reset Training Data button.
5. Click OK when asked if you want to reset
6. Click OK to finish

Remember that this does not stop SPAM from being delivered, but it just sorts out the junk from the legit. The best way to avoid SPAM is to not give out your e-mail.

To protect your privacy, Thunderbird has blocked remote content in this message

If you're on any mailing lists then you're familiar with the fancy e-mails that are sent. Those images are kept on a server somewhere on the Web and need to be loaded. In order to load the images the e-mail client needs to download the data. If this block is not in place you would automatically download data and if that data is malicious you're in trouble.

If you trust the sender then all you need to do is click on the Show remote content button. This will download the images and you'll have a fancy HTML-based e-mail.

password retrieval

If you forgot what your password is for your e-mail you can retrieve it from Thunderbird.

1. Click on the Tools menu and then Options.
2. Click on the Privacy icon along the top.
3. Below that click on the Passwords tab.
4. Press the Edit Saved Passwords button.
5. Press the Show Passwords button and answer Yes to view the passwords.
6. The password will appear in the far-right column labeled Password.

profiles

If you share one Windows user account and have multiple people using e-mail you can separate the e-mail accounts. Right click on the Thunderbird icon on your desktop and select Properties. Add -profilemanager to the end of the location path to read:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -profilemanager

1. Click on Create Profile.
2. Press the Next button.
3. Type in a name for the profile. Any will do.
4. Press the Finish button.

Remove the checkmark from Don't ask at startup, select the profile you want then press Start Thunderbird.

If you need to copy Thunderbird to another computer, check the profile folder in Thunderbird.

RSS news feeds

You can use Thunderbird to receive RSS feeds too.

1. Go to File -> New -> Account.
2. Select RSS News & Blogs
3. Click on Next
4. Name the account whatever you like and click Next.
5. Click Finish

to add a feed

1. Right-click on the new RSS feed account and select Subscribe
2. Click on the Add button.
3. Type in the address of the feed into the Feed URL field. Here is the computervoodoo.biz RSS feed URL:
   http://computervoodoo.biz/rss/rss_feed.xml
4. Press OK. You can have the summary be displayed instead of the web page, but you'll just get plain text instead of pretty web page excitement.
5. Close the window when done adding.

secrecy

If you're interested in top secret e-mails you can employ encryption. E-mails are transmitted in clear text meaning that anyone that intercepts you e-mail can read it. With encryption only you and the receiver will be able to read it. You can do this with Mozilla Thunderbird and the Enigmail extension. This tactic is useful when sending important information like passwords. You can find my public key at the bottom of these web pages. The public key is something you give out to everyone. People use this to encrypt an outgoing message. The private key is something only the receiver possesses and they use that key to decode the message.

Here is a way to visualize the situation. I leave an open safe (the kind you put money and valuables in) for anyone to use. You want to send me a letter so you place it inside the safe, close the door, and put it in the mail for delivery. Anyone could intercept the delivery but they would not be able to read the letter because they do not have the combination to unlock the safe. I am the only one with a combination to the safe so I'm the only one that may read the letter inside. The "public key" is the open safe and the "private key" is the combination to unlock the safe. This differs from the basic way of sending e-mail in cleartext. This would be like writing a postcard and mailing it off. Anyone can read what you wrote on the back of the postcard before it arrives in my mailbox. All they need to do is to intercept the postcard during delivery. Who knows how many people may have read that postcard before I receive it.

Here's how you go about setting up Enigmail and generating keys.

1. Go to the Enigmail extension page and follow the instructions to download and install.
2. How to setup the GNU Privacy Guard: You're going to need to download the GnuPG and install it.
3. How to configure Enigmail: This gives an explanation on how to set up the GnuPG with Enigmail. Basically you need to tell Enigmail where you installed GnuPG to (e.g. C:\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG\gpg.exe) and to tell it where to find encryption keys (e.g. --homedir "C:\GPG keys")
4. Once you've got that done you can start Thunderbird. Up top you'll see a menu for Enigmail. Click on that and select OpenPGP Key Management.
5. Next select the Generate menu and then New Key Pair.
6. First you'll want to select your Account/User ID which is your e-mail account. You'll probably only see one unless you have multiple e-mail accounts.
7. Leave the checkmark in the use generated key for the selected identity. Things may get confusing if you have multiple e-mail accounts and multiple keys. No need to worry about this now.
8. In the passphrase box is where you'll type in your passphrase. Unlike passwords this can be a whole phrase with spaces. The longer the better. The less sense it makes, the better. Mix in some numbers and punctuation. Make sure this is something you can remember and avoid writing it on paper. Consider this to be the most top secret of your passwords. Type it in again in the box to the right to confirm.
9. Key expires in is something you can be flexible with. Set it to whatever time length or choose key does not expire. After the amount of time passes you'll be required to create a new key.
10. Last is key size. Larger is better, but 2048 should suffice. Press the Generate button when done. Moving the mouse and running other programs while the key is generated is a good idea to increase the randomness required during creation.

signatures

updated 2011-02-22

Want to have a signature at the end of your e-mails? You can make a simple text signature by doing the following.

1. Start the Notepad program located in START -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Notepad
2. Type in what you want to appear in your e-mail signature. In mine I have my name, business name, phone number, and Web page address.
3. Click on File -> Save As and give the file a name like signature.txt. Save it in your My Documents or Documents folder.
4. Start Mozilla Thunderbird and click on Tools -> Account Settings
5. Click on the e-mail account you wish to edit on the left.
6. Place a check mark next to Attach the signature from a file instead.
7. Click on the Choose button and navigate to where you saved the signature file from step 3 (My Documents or Documents).
8. Click on the OK button and try creating a new e-mail. Your new signature should appear at the end of the e-mail. The -- inserted above the signature is standard to say that a signature is following.

If you want to create a fancy signature you can use HTML code. Check out www.w3schools.com for some lessons in HTML code.

You can also use an image. Start with step 4 and select the image file instead of the text file. You can make your own image using programs like Photoshop and GIMP.

signatures when your reply preceeds the quoted e-mail

Thunderbird 2 has a problem with remembering to place your signature before the quoted text. Here's how to fix it.

1. Click on the Tools menu and choose Options.
2. Click on the Advanced cog wheel along the top.
3. You should be viewing the General tab. Press the Config Editor button.
4. In the Filter box along the top type in mail.identity.id.
5. If you have multiple identities this may differ. Look for mail.identity.id[X].sig_bottom. [X] is the number of the identity. If you only have one then the number will be 1. Double-click on mail.identity.id1.sig_bottom to set its value from true to false.
6. Close the config window.
7. Press the OK button to finish.

maintenance

To make sure Thunderbird will live a long, happy life with your e-mail you'll want to compact the mail folders. You may be asked while running Thunderbird if you want to compact the folders. Always make sure to answer yes.

1. From within Thunderbird click on the Tools menu. If you don't see the menu bar, press the ALT key on your keyboard to reveal it.
2. Select Options.
3. Click on Advanced along the top.
4. Select the Network & Disk Space tab.
5. Place a check mark next to Compact all folders when it will save over.

repair a folder

updated 2015-07-08

1. Right-click on the folder to repair.
2. Click on Properties.
3. Make sure you're on the General Information tab.
4. Press the Repair Folder button near the bottom-right.

repair multiple folders

updated 2015-07-08

1. Make sure Thunderbird is not running and work your way into the Thunderbird profile directory.
2. Open the appropriate data folder for the e-mail account.
3. Locate the .MSF files for the folder to rebuild and delete them. DO NOT DELETE the files without an extension (e.g. delete INBOX.msf but not INBOX).
4. Start Thunderbird. Thunderbird should rebuild the .MSF files.

Lightning extension

The Lightning extension adds a calendar function to Thunderbird.

integrate Google Calendar with Thunderbird

If you're using Google Calendar you can have Thunderbird automatically grab and post your events.

1. Log into your Google Calendar.
2. Click on the Settings link along the top.
   
3. Click on the Calendars link.
   
4. Select your calendar.
5. Scroll down and you'll see some buttons labeled XML, ICAL, HTML. Click on ICAL.
   
6. Copy the link that appears. You'll use this to allow Thunderbird to talk with Google Calendar.
7. Start Thunderbird and switch over to the calendar view.
8. Click on the Calendar menu and select New Calendar....
9. Select On the network then press Next.
10. Select CalDAV.
11. Paste the copied location from Google Calendar in the Location field.
12. Take a look at the address you pasted. If it reads something like:
    http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/your_email_addr/public/basic.ics
    then change the public to private so it reads:
    http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/your_email_addr/private/basic.ics.
13. Type in a name for the calendar. Any name you like. Then click Next.
14. Press the Finish button.

issues

indexing takes too long

If you see a message like indexing 1 of 26 at the bottom-left corner during start up, and it is taking too long you can turn it off.

1. Click on the Tools menu then Options.
2. Press the Advanced icon along the top.
3. Under the General tab there will be a check box next to Enable Global Search and Indexer. Remove that check mark.
4. Hit the OK button at the bottom.

duplicate e-mails appearing while using a POP3 server

If you're receiving multiple copies of the same e-mail each time you check for new e-mail then there's a problem with the popstate.dat file. The popstate.dat keeps track of the e-mails that have been downloaded from the e-mail server. The simplest solution is to delete the popstate.dat file. This will download all the e-mail stored on the e-mail server one last time and reset the counts in the popstate.dat file.

You can find the popstate.dat file in these locations. The first is Windows XP and the second is Windows Vista and Windows 7. Here are two examples using a Comcast e-mail address.

• \Documents and Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\04z50zh5.default\Mail\mail.comcast.net\popstate.dat
• \Users\VirtualVinnie\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\04z50zh5.default\Mail\mail.comcast.net\popstate.dat

Attachments not appearing

added 2019-04-26

1. Click on the hamburger button (three lines at top-right)
2. Move the mouse onto View.
3. Move the mouse on to Message Body As.
4. Click on Original HTML

Change the font size in Thunderbird

1. In Thunderbird click on the Help menu then select Troubleshooting Information
2. Click Open Folder in the row labeled Profile Folder.
3. Close Thunderbird.
4. Create a new folder named chrome.
5. Open Notepad and paste the code below
   
   /*
   * Do not remove the @namespace line -- it's required for correct functioning
   */
   
   @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");
   
   /*
   *Make all the default font sizes eg:14 px:
   */
   
   * { font-size: 14px !important; }
   
   
6. Save the document as userChrome.css in the chrome folder.
7. Start Thunderbird.