Thunderbird configuration

Adding an account to Thunderbird

Thunderbird SSL Configuration

Adjust your spam settings

Tagging and untagging spam/not spam

How to purge your Inbox and clear your trash on exit

Set your OOO (out of office) message and status

Adding an account to Thunderbird

Select the hamburger (the 3 horizontal lines top right corner) , Options and Account Settings

Select the Account Actions list drop-down bottom left corner and Add Mail Account

In the dialogue box that comes up, enter your full name, email address and password in the respective fields. Click Continue.

Thunderbird will now try to determine your email server settings automatically and displays the result when done.

This is not exactly correct so we'll click Manual Config and adjust the settings manually.

1. Incoming: change the port to 993, SSL column should change to SSL/TLS automatically

2. Outgoing: change the port to 25 (or leave on 587 depending on your ISP requirements)

3. Your username is your account name excluding the domain (ie. excluding surgcare.co.za)

4. Authentication is Normal Password for both incoming and outgoing

Click done when completed.

Thunderbird may ask you to acknowledge some encryption settings - click the checkbox and Done.

Click OK at the Account Settings screen.

SSL Configuration

Start Thunderbird

Right-click on your account in the left-hand pane and select Settings - a new dialogue box will open

Select the Server Settings option below your account

Change Connection Security to SSL/TLS and make sure the Port changes to 993.

Click OK and exit the configuration dialogue box.

Adjust your spam settings

For any account settings, including your account-specific spam/junk settings, right-click your account in the left folder bar and select Settings.

Select Junk Settings under your account section.

Enable both "Trust junk mail headers set by: SpamAssassin" and "Move new junk messages to". Click OK when done.

Junk/Spam email will now automatically be moved to your Junk folder.

Tagging and untagging spam/not spam

Thunderbird has a fairly strong spam learning capability but it requires input from the user to:

tag spam when it has not done so
untag spam when it has tagged something incorrectly

Here follows a screenshot of a Junk box where Thunderbird has tagged emails as spam - note the fire symbol in the Junk column.

If one or more of these were incorrectly tagged (ie. they are not spam), then select the email and click the Not Junk link in the top left corner of the message or alternatively, you can simply click the fire symbol in the Junk column next to the email that should be untagged - the email will be returned to the original folder that it came from (if it came into your Inbox and was tagged there, then it will be returned to your Inbox).

If an email is spam and has not been tagged as such, you can click the fire symbol in the top right corner of the message to mark the email as spam and move it to the Junk folder.

By marking and un-marking emails as spam or not spam, Thunderbird becomes more accurate at spam detection. It also makes use of the server-side Spam marker to learn.

How to purge your Inbox and clear your trash on exit

When deleting email in Thunderbird (and other IMAP clients), email is moved to the Trash folder. When you empty your Trash folder, a ghost copy of the email is left on the server. The process of removing this ghost copy is call "purging your Inbox".

Right-click your account in the left folder bar and select Settings.

Go to Server Settings under your account.

Enable "Clean up Inbox on exit" and "Empty trash on exit".

Click Ok