Configuring Thunderbird

Setting up the Mozilla Thunderbird Email Client

Older instructions

Prior to 2024-6-19 (??date may need changing), instructions for setting up Thunderbird were in an HTML web page https://www.ncf.ca/ncf/support/mail_thunderbird3.html. This page dealt with a single email provider and none of the additional features of Thunderbird. It is also possible that the recommended settings may be sub-optimal or not work.

What you will need to know

While some of the following information may be gathered by Thunderbird itself as we set it up for a particular NCF member, it is useful to have it saved somewhere safe for reference and security. The list of information has been mentioned already in the Email (currently draft??) page. You may also want to know the URL (i.e., address) of your Calendar. If you are going to use your NCF Zimbra Calendar, then you will want the ICS URL that you can find using the following steps:

Log into your NCF account with a web browser.
Choose Email (i.e., Zimbra)
Select Calendar
Click the small downward pointing triangle next to the Calendar. This will open up a menu box.
Choose Share Calendar from the menu. This will open a dialog for sharing your calendar

 with other users, but we just want the ICS URL at the bottom.

The ICS URL for NCF member zz999 will be

  https://mail.ncf.ca/home/zz999@ncf.ca/Calendar.ics

You can generally copy the text of the URL by Right-Click on it, so it is easy to paste into the Calendar settings of Thunderbird or into a file where this information will be saved.

Downloading and Installing Thunderbird

Installers for Thunderbird can be found and downloaded from https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/download/

Notes:

Windows users have a choice of 64 bit exe, 64 bit msi and 32 bit exe files. Mostly the default suggested should work, but some older versions of Windows may need a particular choice.
Windows may object to running the installer. If so, you will need to set the "Choose where to get apps" in the "Apps and Features" section of the Control panel (i.e., settings) for your installation of Windows. A workable choice is "Anywhere, but warn me ...". Microsoft tries hard to get you to use their software, and sometimes to pay for it too.
Linux users may find Thunderbird is already installed with their distribution. Most common Linux distros include Thunderbird automatically. If not, they almost always have a way to install it via the distribution's package installer e.g., the apt tool for Debian/Ubuntu/Mint families, or yum for Red Hat/SUSE and related distros. Using the download page is generally a poor alternative, since the installers arrange for automatic updates which improve security and fix bugs.

Install Thunderbird either by running the downloaded installer or via your operating system's package manager.

Basic Thunderbird Configuration

Thunderbird is a large and busy application. We will not cover all possibilities here.

Launch Thunderbird if it does not do so automatically after installation.
Generally Thunderbird will ask for information to set up email.
If Thunderbird does not start the Add Mail Account setup process, go to Account Settings. Unfortunately, this may not be in a standard location. On Windows version 115.12.1 (64-bit) this is found under Tools, but you may need to press the F10 key to get the File Edit View Go Message Events_and_Tasks Tools Help menu displayed. On Linux version 115.12.0 (64-bit) the Account Settings are under Edit. Choose Account Actions, then Add Mail Account. You may also access Account Settings from the "Settings" icon that generally appears near the lower left of the Thunderbird window.
A dialog box will appear wanting
- your full name. This can be any name. It is what gets displayed as the sender of messages to your message recipients
- Email address. This should be your NCF account e.g., zz999@ncf.ca where zz999 is your account name.
- Password: the password you use to log into the NCF start page. Watch that the Caps Lock is NOT set. Type carefully.
- A check box to "Remember Password" can be checked. This saves entering the password each time you look at your email.
Click "Continue". Thunderbird will try to connect to NCF and determine appropriate settings for the incoming and outgoing mail servers. For NCF both are mail.ncf.ca but the ports are different.
- The incoming server defaults to port 143 using STARTTLS connection security and Normal Password authentication using IMAP server type.
- The outgoing server defaults to port 587 with the same connection and authentication using SMTP protocol.

Generally, Thunderbird should now be able to send and receive email. If you have another email, or a friend willing to help, send a short test message and ask for a reply to test that the email is working.

Adding a Calendar

Thunderbird supports using multiple calendars. Here we will look at just setting up your NCF calendar. Let us suppose your NCF account is zz999.

Click on the Calendar icon (usually third from top on left hand side of Thunderbird window) or choose "File / New / Calendar" from the File ... menu (displayed by pressing the F10 key).
In the "Create New Calendar" select "On the Network", then "Next"
Give your username (e.g., zz999). Make sure the Email is correct. Then "Create Calendar".
You may have to repeat your username and enter the ICS URL mentioned above, then Subscribe to the Calendar.
At some point you will need to enter your NCF login password (and choose to save it in the password manager).

Thunderbird tries to find the calendar definition files, but because there are many variations on how the URLs are specified, you likely will need to enter the address of the Calendar.ics file for your account.

Note that you can subscribe to more than one calendar if you have permission to access them. Be aware that calendar setup can often be quite tricky.

Adding Address Books

Address books or Contacts files are often troublesome to keep tidy and to share across applications. Sadly, they are also the files that outsiders, both hackers and corporations like Google and Microsoft, want to get their hands on. Thunderbird will gather email addresses into your "personal" address book from incoming emails. However, you may wish to use existing contacts. Thunderbird can "import" various address book file types (vCard, LDIF, SQLite, mab, csv). Comma Separated Value (csv) files have the nice feature that they are very easily imported into spreadsheets for viewing and organizing, but you do need to export them again if you want to bring the edited version into Thunderbird. We recommend clicking on the "Import" link and responding to the dialogs. Be sure to check the resulting collection of contacts.

Adding Feeds etc.

Use the instructions under Basic Thunderbird Configuration to access Account Settings. From this, under Account Actions you can access the dialogs for adding feeds etc.

Adding another email

You can add another email from Account Settings / Account Actions in the same manner as the initial email. The accounts will both appear in the sidebar of Thunderbird. However, if you then look at Account Settings you will see both accounts but also a separate line Outgoing Server (SMTP). Clicking on that line will show "Outgoing Server (SMTP) Settings" and usually the servers for both email identities will appear, but one will be the default. You can change this if you wish. When replying to a message, the outgoing server for the email address that received the message will be used. The "default" is only used when you click on a "mailto:" link or perform some similar action where the account is not specified.

More customization

Thunderbird allows a lot of choices in how it works and appears. Possibly the most important is how Right Click on the account or folders in the left hand sidebar allows folders to be created, moved or deleted. A particularly nice feature is that you can highlight messages in the message list and move them between accounts and account folders. Very helpful to keep mail orderly. There are also "Local Folders". You can choose where these appear in your file storage by Right Click on the Local Folders and choosing a directory other than the default, which generally is more or less hidden or out of the way. It can be helpful to have a "LocalMail" directory tree to archive mail and back it up.

Extensions

Like many other programs, Thunderbird allows Extensions or Add-Ins. See https://addons.thunderbird.net. These can be accessed and installed from within Thunderbird. We recommend only installing the add-ons that you really need to avoid enlarging the complexity of your installation and corresponding risk of bugs or hacking. Moreover, the add-ons are almost always third-party software, and their correctness and maintenance is not guaranteed. Nevertheless, some will be important for some users, such as tools to synchronize address books across more than one computer. For example, you may have a desktop machine and a laptop, as well as a mobile phone. Or you and your partner may want to share a set of family email contacts.