Thunderbird is a free email application that's easy to set up and customize - and it's loaded with great features!
Some of the key articles available in Thunderbird:
How to Setup a POP3 Email Account in Mozilla Thunderbird
How to Setup an IMAP Email Account in Mozilla Thunderbird
Switch from POP to IMAP account
Blocking a Sender (Thunderbird)
Difference between IMAP and POP3
Changing Frequency of Checking Email in Thunderbird
How to Setup a POP3 Email Account in Mozilla Thunderbird
1. Open your Mozilla Thunderbird.
2. Go to Tools > Account Settings.
3. Click Create a new account.
4. Choose Skip this an use my existing email.
5. Enter Your name, full Email address and Password , click Continue.
6. At Mail account setup configure screen,choose Manual config.
7. Select the type of incoming server : POP3
Enter the name of your Incoming and Outgoing mail server as follow:
NON-SSL
Incoming mail server POP: mail.domain.com
Outgoing mail server SMTP : mail.domain.com
(replace your OWN domain name for domain)
SSL
Incoming mail server POP: serverhostname
Outgoing mail server SMTP : serverhostname
(serverhostname refers to the name of the server that is hosting your email
serverhostname can be found from your web hosting control panel server information section )
For Ports:
NON-SSL
Incoming POP : 110
Outgoing for POP : 587
SSL
Incoming POP : 995
Outgoing for POP : 465
(If SSL is choosen, click SSL/TLS under SSL option. Otherwise, select None.)
8. The username would be your full email address such as [email protected]
9. Click on Re-test the configuration and Click Done.
10. Back to your Thunderbird main menu and go to Outgoing Server and confirm your Outgoing SMTP server.
11. Check the Use name and password box and assign your email account to the User Name.
Select No for Use secure connection.
12. You may start using Thunderbird by clicking on the top left Get Mail button.
Below will be a sample of video tutorial on "How to Setup a POP3 Email Account in Mozilla Thunderbird"
using NON SSL setup.
For SSL setup you may just replace the "serverhostname" and "SSL ports" based from above steps.
How to Setup an IMAP Email Account in Mozilla Thunderbird
1. Open your Mozilla Thunderbird.
2. Go to Tools > Account Settings.
3. Click Create a new account.
4. Choose Skip this and use my existing email.
5. Enter Your name, full Email address and Password , click Continue.
6. At Mail account setup configure screen,choose Manual config .
7. Select the type of incoming server : IMAP.
Enter the name of your Incoming and Outgoing mail server as follow:
NON-SSL
Incoming mail server IMAP : mail.domain.com
Outgoing mail server SMTP : mail.domain.com
(replace your OWN domain name for domain)
SSL
Incoming mail server IMAP : serverhostname
Outgoing mail server SMTP : serverhostname
(serverhostname refers to the name of the server that is hosting your email
serverhostname can be found from your web hosting control panel server information section )
For Ports:
NON-SSL
Incoming IMAP : 143
Outgoing for IMAP : 587
SSL
Incoming IMAP : 993
Outgoing for IMAP : 465
(If SSL is choosen, click SSL/TLS under SSL option. Otherwise, select None.)
8. Username will be your full email such as [email protected]
9. Click on Re-test the configuration and Click Done.
10. Back to your Thunderbird main menu and go to Outgoing Server and confirm your Outgoing SMTP server.
11. Check the Use name and password box and assign your email account to the User Name
and select No for Use secure connection.
12. You may start using Thunderbird by clicking on the top left Get Mail button.
Below will be a sample of video tutorial on "How to Setup an IMAP Email Account in Mozilla Thunderbird"
For SSL setup you may just replace the "serverhostname" and "SSL ports" based
from above steps.
1. Disable your POP account
To avoid duplication, go to the account settings by clicking Tools>Account Settings.
Then select server settings and uncheck
⦁ Check for new messages at startup
⦁ Check for new messages every XX minutes
2. Create the IMAP account
Click File>New>Existing account.
Setup the account(can provide link from our existing knowledge base entry).
Select IMAP(remote folders). Then click create account.
3. Transfer local messages to the server
If there are messages from the old POP account that you would like in your IMAP account,
simply drag and drop and move the files into your IMAP account. This process may take
up some time depending on the amount of email you transfer.
4. Delete your POP account
Once you have ensured that all the important messages from the POP account has been
moved to the IMAP account, the POP account can be deleted. Please make sure that all
the messages in the POP account is not of used anymore before deleting.
Open account settings from Tools>Account Settings and select the respective account.
Click on Account actions button at the bottom and select Remove Account.
Blocking a Sender (Thunderbird)
Thunderbird does not provide an option to block email from specific people or domain.
Fortunately, you can use message filters to automatically dispose unwanted messages.
1. On the sender's email that you wish to block, right-click on sender's address and choose Create Filter From...
2. The filter rules window will be automatically opened with the sender's email address.
3. Name the filter appropriately.
4. Change the action to perform to Delete Message.
5. Click OK to save the filter.
If the sender tries to send another email to your email address, the email will be automatically deleted.
Thunderbird comes with 2 different mail protocols which are POP3 and IMAP.
Users must choose between this two whenever creating an account.
The difference between these 2 protocols are:-
IMAP : The emails are stored in the server. Whenever a change is done to Thunderbird,
the server will also be applied with the same change and any changes done on
the server will also be applied to Thunderbird.
POP3 : New emails are stored in the server, which will then be downloaded by
Thunderbird to store on user's computer. Once downloaded is completed,
the copy from the server will be deleted.
In deciding which protocol to be chosen, it depends on the type of usage that users desire.
Will the account be accessed from more than 1 device?
Use IMAP.
Do you have limited storage of your mailbox?
Most of the time, mail providers have given enough space for users to store everything on the server.
But if the user plan on storing more than 15 GB , choose POP3.
Changing Frequency of Checking Email in Thunderbird
1. Click the Tools menu and select Account Settings.
2. Click on the Server Settings tab.
3. The mail checking frequency is set with Check for new messages every __ minutes.
4. Click OK to save changes.
From now on, Thunderbird will check for new mail in that specific account as frequently as you have selected.
Repeat the steps above for other email accounts you have set up.