Sending and Receiving Messages on Thunderbird
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The Basics
As soon as you’ve set up an email account, you’re ready to start sending and receiving messages in Thunderbird. Here’s how to do it.
To send a new message
1. Click in the toolbar.
The new message window will appear.
2. In the To box, type the email address you want to send the message to.
3. In the Subject box, type the subject of your message.
4. Type your message in the message pane.
5. Click .
Receiving messages
Thunderbird checks for new messages every time you open the application. It will also automatically check again every 10 minutes.
To check for messages at any other time, click in the toolbar.
Customizing how messages are sent and received
Get Thunderbird flying the way you want it! Many settings can easily be customized.
- Set how often you want Thunderbird to automatically check for messages in . Or just shut it off if it bugs you.
- When you’re writing a new message, your work is auto-saved every five minutes. But you can make it more often, or less, under the General tab in .
- Choose your own sound alert for new messages in .
- Thunderbird displays unread messages in bold type, changing to normal type as soon as you click on the message. But what if you sometimes open a message and then decide to read it later? Go to the Reading & Display tab under to set how long Thunderbird should delay before marking a message as read.
Advanced
Configuring email accounts
When Thunderbird downloads messages, it uses the configuration on the Server Settings page of each email account (accessed via Tools | Account Settings). Each email address corresponds to one incoming mail server (either POP or IMAP).
Thunderbird sends messages to the SMTP server that is assigned to the selected email account. In Account Settings (Tools | Account Settings), outgoing SMTP servers are configured on the Outgoing Server (SMTP) page (accessed from the bottom of the account list on the left side). Next, the Outgoing SMTP server is assigned to each account by clicking on the account name (also on the left side of the account list) and selecting the desired server from the Outgoing Server (SMTP) drop-down list.
Each email account is listed in the "All Folders" panel on the left side of the Thunderbird interface:
For information about manually configuring email accounts, see Configure an Account. For information about automatically configure new email accounts, see Automatic Account Configuration.
Downloading incoming messages
By default, Thunderbird will check your mail server(s) for new messages on application startup and then automatically every 10 minutes. You can configure the frequency from : Select your account from the account list, and then select .
In addition to that, you can check for new messages manually at any time:
- To get new messages for the currently selected account, click the button in the top left corner of Thunderbird's main window, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + TCommand + T F5F5 or F9F5 or Command + Y. Alternatively, right-click the account in the folder pane and select , or select (where "Current Account" is the account highlighted in the folder pane).
- To get new messages for all accounts, click the dropdown arrow of the button, and then select , or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + TCommand + Shift + T Shift + F5Shift + F5 or Shift + F9Shift + F5 or Command + Shift + Y. Alternatively, select .
Composing a new message
To compose a new message, click the Write button in the top left corner of the main Thunderbird interface. Alternatively, select Message | New Message or use the keyboard shortcut Command + N (Mac) / Ctrl + M (Windows / Linux).
If an email (or newsgroup) account is highlighted in the "All Folders" panel, the message's "From" address will default to the selected account. If no account is specified, the "From" address will default to the first account configured in the Account Settings (Tools | Account Settings). Click the From drop-down list to select a different account.
Specify one message recipient per line. Click the arrow in the field to the left of the recipient name to specify the type of recipient (for example, "To", "CC", etc).
To insert addresses from your address book, enter some of the characters from the person's name in the To field. A drop-down list will show all address book entries where the first or last name starts with the character(s) you entered. For example, if you enter "jo", anyone in the address book with the last name of "Johnson" or the first name of "Joe" would be displayed in the drop-down list.
You can also drag and drop addresses from your address book to a new message. Simply open the address book, select the desired entry and drag it to the recipient area of the new message.
Replying to a message
To reply to a message, click the Reply or Reply All button when the message is displayed. Alternatively, right-click the message in the Message List and select Reply to Sender Only (Ctrl / Command + R), Reply to All (Ctrl / Command + Shift + R) or Reply to List (Ctrl / Command + Shift + L).