Thunderbird Tutorial for Macintosh
Summary: Thunderbird is a popular and free email program that is supported for use at UCI with OIT MailBox Services. It is designed by the same people that developed Netscape and shares a similar interface.
Contents
Overview of the Thunderbird Window
This tutorial assumes you have already configured your Thunderbird Email program to send and receive email from your OIT MailBox account. If you have not done so, please do so before you begin. This tutorial was written using Thunderbird 2.0 on the Macintosh.
When you start Thunderbird, you will see a window with three panes. (See Figure 1)
- The LEFT pane lists your Mail Folders, including:
- Your Inbox folder with all your incoming messages.
- Your Drafts folder with messages you are writing.
- Your Sent folder with messages you have sent.
- Your Trash folder with messages you have deleted, but are still stored until you empty the trash.
- Any other folders you have created.
For example the SPAM folders shown are created when you turn on spam filtering in My Email Options. If you have created folders on your local hard drive, the folders will be organized into a Local Folders section.
- The TOP pane is the list of messages in the selected folder. When you click on a message in the list, the details of the message appear in the BOTTOM pane.
- The BOTTOM pane shows you the Message Preview.
Figure 1
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Sending A Test Message
- Select New > Message from the File menu or click the Write icon in the toolbar. (See Figure 2)
Figure 2 - Enter in your email address in the To: field. (See Figure 3)
- To send to more than one person, use commas between addresses.
- You can also add addresses in the Cc: (Carbon copy) or Bcc: (Blind carbon copy) fields. To show the Cc or Bcc fields, click the empty cell beneath the To: field to create a new To: field and select Cc or Bcc from the drop down menu.
- If you have configured Thunderbird to use UCI's LDAP directory server, you can start typing the UCI recipient's name in the To field. Thunderbird will query the UCI directory and display the found names. Select the person you want to send the message to from the list of found names.
- Enter in a subject line. This should be a brief description of what the message is about.
- Enter in the text of the message in the main body. You can format the message using the provided toolbar.
- If you are sending an attachment, click the Attach button and browse to the file you want to send.
- Only send attachments when it is necessary and when your recipients are expecting the attachment.
- To check the spelling of your message, click the Spell button in the toolbar.
- When you are ready to send your message, click the Send button in the toolbar at the top of the message window.
( You can also Save the message and send it later. It will be stored in your Drafts folder until you are ready to send the message. )
Figure 3 - Your message should be sent. A copy will be saved in your Sent folder.
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Checking Your Mail and Reading Your Message
It may take a few minutes for your test message to be delivered. If you check and you have no new mail, try again in a few minutes.
- Click the Get Mail button in the main toolbar. (See Figure 4) You can also select Get New Messages For from the File menu.
Figure 4 - Select the message in the message list to open it in the message preview pane in the lower section. To view it in a larger window, double-click on the message to open it in a new window.
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Creating New Mail Folders
To create a new folder in your OIT MailBox account (IMAP only):
- From the File menu, select New > Folder
- Type a name for the new mailbox folder.
- From the Create as a subfolder of: drop down menu, select your UCI account. (See Figure 5)
( If you are using POP, you can only create folders on your computer. Choose Local Folders from the Subfolder down menu. ) - Click OK.
Figure 5 - Your new folder will appear in your list of folders. (See Figure 6)
Figure 6 - If you are using IMAP this new folder is stored on the server and will be available to you from any other IMAP connection, such as Webmail or another configuration of Thunderbird on another computer.
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Moving Messages Between Folders
You will use this same procedure whether you are moving messages between folders on the server, between a folder on the server and one on your hard drive, or between folders on your hard drive.
You can use any of these three methods for moving messages:
- Select the message you want to move, select Move > from the Message menu, and then select the folder to which you want to move the message, or
- Control-click on the message you want to move, and select the destination folder from the drop-down list under Move To, or
- Drag the message header from the message list to a folder in the folder list.
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Deleting a Message
If you are using IMAP, your messages are stored on the server. It is important to delete messages you will no longer need to ensure you do not go over your quota. You can also move messages to a folder on your hard drive by using the methods above.
- Select your test message by clicking on it once.
- Click the Delete button in the toolbar.
- If you change your mind and want to UNDELETE a message, you'll find it in the folder named Trash. Simply move this message back to your Inbox if you still need it.
Note: By default, Thunderbird keeps messages in your Trash until you empty the trash. You can change this in Tools > Account Settings > Server Settings. You can also empty the trash at any time by selecting Empty Trash from the File menu or right-clicking on the Trash folder and selecting Empty Trash.
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Junk Mail
Thunderbird has an easy to use Junk Mail filter built in. You can use this in combination with My Email Option's Spam Filtering to filter out unwanted email.
- Junk mail filtering should be enabled by default, but is likely in Training mode. This will flag messages as Junk but keep them in your Inbox. Once you feel comfortable that Thunderbird is correctly identifying Junk mail, you can move the messages to the Junk folder automatically.
- From the Tools menu, select Account Settings.
- Select the Junk Settings link in the left menu. (See Figure 7)
- Make sure Enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account is checked.
- Select the Move new junk messages to: box and click the Junk folder on: UCI Email radio button. (This name will correspond to the name you gave your UCI account and may differ from the one shown.)
- Click the OK button.
Figure 7 - Thunderbird will now move any message it believes to be Junk to the Junk folder.
- If you receive a message that is not marked as Junk, but you believe it should be, simply click the Junk button in the top toolbar. The message will be moved to the Junk folder.
As you mark messages, you "train" Thunderbird about what you consider to be junk mail, and Thunderbird updates its internal junk mail database accordingly. - If Thunderbird marks a message as Junk but it is not, simply click the This Is Not Junk button in the message preview. The message will have to manually be moved back to the Inbox from the Junk folder.
This should give you an overview of how to use Thunderbird. More help can be found under the Help menu of the Thunderbird program.
