Mozilla Thunderbird Tips, Tricks and Secrets

Thunderbird flies! The free email program from the makers of Mozilla Firefox shines with easy to use yet powerful features — and you can make it fly faster and fly farther. Find out which tips and techniques have helped others get the most out of their Thunderbird and profit from them, too.

So... you'd like to get the most out of Mozilla Thunderbird? Compose rich emails, access web-based accounts, filter spam, search fast, and more fun stuff like that? Learn it all in small weekly doses that never overwhelm but make your experience with Mozilla Thunderbird better and better over time.

Send and receive encrypted and signed emails comfortably with Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape and Mozilla.

Let Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla save you bandwidth and download time by telling it not to fetch large emails automatically.

Set the right priorities in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape and Mozilla: change the priority level of the emails you send easily.

For a fast way to have Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla fetch new mail in all your accounts, try this keyboard shortcut.

Don't let not using the Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla spell checker be your biggest mistake.

Okay, okay you won't type faster; but you'll start typing a new message faster in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla with this tip.

Compose a message to an entry in your Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla address book easily.

Delete consequently with this Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape and Mozilla keyboard shortcut. It lets you remove messages immediately without putting them in the Trash.

Even templates can change. Here's how to edit message templates in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape and Mozilla.

All your mail deserves highest priority, and that's why I have programmed Mozilla Thunderbird (and Netscape as well as Mozilla) to assign the highest priority to all emails from you automatically. Here's how you can do the same...

Browse through your new messages fast in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape and Mozilla.

See all the important stuff at once in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape and Mozilla by grouping flagged messages.

If spam and good mail are mixed nicely in your Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla Inbox, you can clear up the display by hiding all the spam with two clicks.

Download mail from your Yahoo! Mail account into Mozilla Thunderbird and send messages through the former from the powerful desktop email program, too.

When Mozilla Thunderbird spreads its wings and Gmail opens its doors, you can create an account in Mozilla Thunderbird to send and receive Gmail messages.

You can have your mail in the web-based AIM Mail and see it in Mozilla Thunderbird, too. Here's how to access a free AIM Mail account with Mozilla Thunderbird.

Use Mozilla Thunderbird to manage mail in your AOL email account (and send from your AOL address, too).

All you need to know is your Gmail address, and you're ready to access all the mail it receives in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Download mail from your Inbox.com account directly into your Mozilla Thunderbird Inbox, and mail sent from Thunderbird will show up online under "Sent Mail", too.

Would you like to access your email not only from the computer at home or work but also remotely from any place and computer with an internet connection?

If you have an IMAP account, then I'm sure you appreciate how you can access it from anywhere and always see the latest mails. But what if you'll be without net access? Here's how to take your emails with you in Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla SeaMonkey or Netscape nevertheless.

Use an image as your background when you write an email in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Teach your Mozilla Thunderbird spell checker a new language.

Want to add your fancy "X-Y: Z" header to emails or need to set the "Sender:"? Here's how to add any header to emails you send with Mozilla Thunderbird or Netscape.

Want your logo, a photo or some other graphic to appear in your signature? Here's how to add an image to your signature in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Send your message to more than one recipient easily with Mozilla Thunderbird.

Build your Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla address book with ease and two clicks by adding the senders of incoming mails instantly.

Want to add multiple recipients from your address book to the To:, Cc: or Bcc: field in Mozilla Thunderbird? Here's how to do it with verve and elegance.

Clean up the list of folders in Mozilla Thunderbird and archive old mail on a disk or internet storage. It's always easy to add archived folders back into Mozilla Thunderbird.

Copy all your Mozilla Thunderbird data (emails, contacts, settings, filters, junk mail training data and more) to a new computer, different partition or backup location.

Have Mozilla Thunderbird display messages you are reading using your favorite font face and color.

If your favorite email font is not Times New Roman, here's how to change the default font face and color for new messages in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Stop hitting the "Get Msgs" button. Mozilla Thunderbird can do that for you, automatically and comfortably.

No mail escapes unspellchecked. Here's how to have Mozilla Thunderbird spell-check every email automatically before it is delivered.

Get instant feedback on your spelling with Mozilla Thunderbird's inline spell checker.

If you don't like Mozilla Thunderbird creating a unique "Inbox" for each account, use the global inbox for all your POP accounts instead.

Only compact folders are good folders. Here's how to compact your mail folders in Mozilla Thunderbird, and reclaim wasted disk space.

Use a more comfortable and powerful message editor in Mozilla Thunderbird, and add inline images, custom fonts and other formatting fancy to your emails.

Setting up a filter for future messages from the same sender is easy in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Deliver mail to a group of people easily with Mozilla Thunderbird by setting up a simple, but useful mailing list.

Change your Mozilla Thunderbird message labels to any text and color you like.

As soon as you click on a message, Mozilla Thunderbird shows it. Here's how to stop that and delete emails without opening them first.

Delete attached files from emails you have received in Mozilla Thunderbird to save mailbox space while still saving the messages for reference. You can even replace the attachment with a link to the file on your hard disk.

Away with all distractions in my Inbox! Here's how to hide all read mail in a folder in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Do you forward messages to yourself to add a few comments or ideas to emails you have received? How about simply editing them, right in Mozilla Thunderbird?

If your contacts are in Mozilla Thunderbird but this is not where they should be, you can save them to a CSV file, which in turn allows you to import the email addresses and other details in another program.

Migrate all your mail from Mozilla Thunderbird to Outlook Express, from where you can further export it to other email programs, if necessary.

If your email address is known by your best friends only and you know the email addresses of these friends, treating anything not from these senders as junk works wonders. In Mozilla Thunderbird, you can set up a filter that does just that in mere minutes.

Locate the folder that contains your Mozilla Thunderbird messages, filters, settings and more.

Instead of starting, Mozilla Thunderbird complains about a profile in use or another instance "already running, but not responding"? Here's how to kill processes and delete hidden lock files to help Mozilla Thunderbird run again. Sounds fun?

As attachments, the emails you forward with Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla will be sure to arrive in tip-top shape at the recipient.

Send emails on and on and on and on and... with Mozilla Thunderbird.

Collapse all old mail in a folder, or see only the messages with high importance in your Mozilla Thunderbird Inbox. Grouping by sort order makes it all possible.

If you move from using Mozilla Thunderbird for your mail to relying mostly on Gmail, here's how to take all your messages with you in a clean and simple fashion.

It's easy, fast and effortless to import all your email messages from Outlook Express into Mozilla Thunderbird.

If you access your Gmail account in Mozilla Thunderbird, how about importing your contacts, too? Here's how to copy your Gmail address book to Mozilla Thunderbird.

Link to anywhere on the net freely and easily with Mozilla Thunderbird.

Instead of merely attaching an image, why not include it inline in the body of your message sent from Mozilla Thunderbird?

Make helpful support people happy (and extra helpful) support people, or find out yourself what might be wrong with your email settings by taking a close look at what Mozilla Thunderbird does --- and what happens --- when you try to send or receive mail.

When you click the link to a web page in an email, nothing happens? Here's how to make links work again and open happily in your browser; works for Outlook, Outlook Express, and just about any other Windows email program.

Wish Mozilla Thunderbird would not keep copies of all your emails offline on your computer when it is already stored quite safely on the IMAP server? Here's how to set up Mozilla Thunderbird to store only the most recent messages locally.

Let Mozilla Thunderbird keep your Inbox clean by automatically moving incoming mail that's determined to be spam to a special 'Junk' folder.

Has your Mozilla Thunderbird profile outgrown its partition or disk? Do you want to move it to a different location? Here's how.

Want to see all but at the same time only the relevant mail in Mozilla Thunderbird? Here's how to create folders that automatically aggregate messages from all other folders based on your search criteria.

Does Mozilla Thunderbird ask you — all the time — whether you want a message you're about to send delivered in plain text or HTML? Here's how to stop the questioning and make Mozilla Thunderbird do what you choose — all the time, and automatically.

You cannot stop Mozilla Thunderbird from marking mail read when it shows in the preview pane altogether, but you can prevent that from happening for a long time. Usually, this will be good enough.

Want to make sure other people with access to your computer cannot open your mail? Here's how to protect your email program data with your Windows log-on password and maybe even encryption.

Keep only the last 900 messages in your "Trash" or remove items from RSS feeds after 3 months. Mozilla Thunderbird can trim folders automatically and very flexibly for you.

Have messages mysteriously disappeared from your Mozilla Thunderbird inbox? Do deleted emails still linger in a folder? Here's how to have Mozilla Thunderbird rebuild a folder's index (or many in a bunch) and repair its display.

Have you found a bug in Mozilla Thunderbird or want to suggest a feature? Here's where to go and what to do.

Restore Mozilla Thunderbird as it was — on your old computer, or before your hard disk crashed.

Avoid a lot of typing and save a lot of time with email templates in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape and Mozilla.

Watch Mozilla Thunderbird save draft copies of your messages as you compose them, automatically and in the background (just in case).

Looking for old mail or a recent message from a certain contact? Let Mozilla Thunderbird help with near-instant and flexible search results.

Find messages in the current folder fast in Mozilla Thunderbird — by sender, subject, text, read status, attachment and more.

Want to know how many emails or unread messages each folder contains right in the Mozilla Thunderbird folder list?

Send an email to a group of people easily with Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla.

Mail groups in Mozilla Thunderbird without revealing the names and email addresses to all recipients.

Don't send huge emails, point to the location of the image on the web instead. Here's how to send your images inline in emails without attaching them with Mozilla Thunderbird.

Mozilla Thunderbird does not start? Possibly, it's a faulty extension. Here's how you can launch Mozilla Thunderbird in a special "safe" mode that disables all extension so you can get rid of the problematic ones.

Start composing where you prefer: here's how to have Mozilla Thunderbird position the cursor at the top, above quoted text, when you reply.

Get rid of that unnecessary dialog that comes up when you send an email with Mozilla Thunderbird by tweaking a hidden setting.

Mozilla Thunderbird includes highly effective junk mail filtering. Make sure it's turned on so you can profit from a much cleaner Inbox.

The "Templates" folder in Mozilla Thunderbird is useful, even for message templates!

Mozilla Thunderbird provides easy access to a compact list of your favorite folders, or those with unread messages, or folders you have used recently.

Two keys to a larger font size when composing a message in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla.

Mark messages to-do, personal, important, or whatever you like easily in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape and Mozilla.

Read everything (or, at least, make it look like you're read everything) in a Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla folder with a few key strokes.

Type email addresses and addresses of web pages you want to include in your emails. Mozilla Thunderbird will do the rest.

Send a couple of email messages to the printer easily with Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla.

Read mail more comfortably by zooming it to a larger font in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla.

If you're looking for a fast way to search for messages in a folder or folder hierarchy in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla, the context menu is a good bet.

If you have more than one identity (or account), here's how to select the right one for each email you write in Mozilla Thunderbird or Mozilla.

Make sure you're not confusing older email programs or alienate recipients who don't like HTML messages by sending a plain text only email with Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla.

Apply an often more sensible order to your Inbox in Mozilla Thunderbird: sorting by date with a twist.

Collect all outgoing Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla mail in a special folder, move it to your Inbox, or wherever.

Checking the spelling of a message subject in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla? You can't. But you can. Here's how.

How to tell the spell checker in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla to leave URLs in emails alone.

Tell Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla how spam looks like, and what good mail is, and it will detect both reliably.

Create the fanciest email messages in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape and Mozilla with a simple tool: custom HTML tags.

He dropped me like a contact! Here's how to address messages quickly by drag and drop in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla.

Open your Inbox in Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or MOzilla and find it pre-classified and organized by smart filtering.

Make Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape or Mozilla send mail through mail servers that require authentication.

Hey Mozilla Thunderbird (hey, Mozilla; hey, Netscape), show me everything, in plain text.

Do you want to download mail from your Windows Live Hotmail account into Mozilla Thunderbird? Here's how easy this is to set up with a smart tool...

Do you want a Bcc: copy of all messages you send at another email address (say, a Gmail account)? Here's how to automatically Bcc: in Mozilla Thunderbird to any and all addresses you desire.

Have you ever moved a message, then moved another message — to the same folder? In Mozilla Thunderbird, you can employ a swift keyboard command to do that much faster than the mouse would ever allow.