Mozilla Thunderbird

Software made to make email easier.

Thunderbird is a free email application that’s easy to set up and customize - and it’s loaded with great features!

These days many people manage their email on the web using services such as Gmail or Hotmail. These services offer access to email accounts through any web browser. It is convenient because you can get your email from almost any computer. If you live in New York and you are backpacking in Thailand, just find an Internet cafe, log on to a computer, and check your email.

Another way to handle your email is to use an email client program installed on your own computer. A program like this offers many advantages over using a web email client. It lets you organize your email exactly how you want, it enables you to check email when you are not connected to the Internet, and you can manage multiple email accounts in one place. That said, desktop email clients and web email clients can coexist side-by-side. Using an email client at home doesn't preclude you from using web email when you want to check your account while you are on the road.

Mozilla Thunderbird is a feature-rich, reliable, and secure tool for managing your email. It's free and open source and it comes from the folks at Mozilla, the people who created the Firefox web browser. Thunderbird has been around since 2004, and is used by many people around the world. Best of all, it runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. You can connect to many email services with it, including Gmail, Hotmail, and GMX. Finally, Mozilla regularly releases new versions of the software that keep Thunderbird secure and up to date.

This manual shows you how to use Thunderbird to manage your email. It takes you through the steps of downloading, installing, configuring, and using Thunderbird. If you have problems using the program, there are chapters with help on how to resolve problems and that show where to get additional support.

Thunderbird's Features

If you're wondering why you should use Thunderbird, its range of features give the program a lot of flexibility. Here's a list of Thunderbird's main features:

Rich-text email composition
Email account set up wizards
Secure connection to email accounts
Password protection
Tabbed interface
Junk mail and phishing protection
Customizable look and feel
Smart folders
Add-ons for feature enhancements
Email search and filtering
Message archiving
Address book
Update manager

Installing Thunderbird on Mac OS X

Thunderbird runs on Mac OS X 10.4.x and later. Thunderbird will run on a computer with at least the following hardware:

An Intel x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor

256 MB of memory. Mozilla recommends 512 MB of memory or more

200 MB hard drive space

Download and Install Thunderbird

Use your web browser to visit the Thunderbird download page at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/. This page detects your computer's operating system and language, and it recommends the best version of Thunderbird for you to use.
If you want to use Thunderbird in a different languages or with a different operating system, click the Other Systems and Languages link on the right side of the page and select the version you need.
Download the Thunderbird disk image. When the download is complete, the disc image may automatically open and mount a new volume called Thunderbird.
If the volume did not mount automatically, open the Download folder and double-click the disk image to mount it. A Finder window appears:

Drag the Thunderbird icon into your Applications folder. You've installed Thunderbird!
Optionally, drag the Thunderbird icon from the Applications folder into the Dock. Choosing the Thunderbird icon from the Dock lets you quickly open Thunderbird from there.

Note: When you run Thunderbird for the first time, newer versions of Mac OS X (10.5 or later) will warn you that the application Thunderbird.app was downloaded from the Internet.

If you downloaded Thunderbird from the Mozilla site, click the Open button.