Folders were still restricted by the email account order in the folder listing, with no apparent option to change this in Thunderbird.

Enter the Thunderbird add-on Folderpane Tools. The add-on is compatible with all Thunderbird 2 and Thunderbird 3 releases. It is installed like any other Thunderbird extension. Head over to the official Folderpane Tools page at Mozilla.org and download the extension to the local computer system.

Fire up Thunderbird and open the add-on manager by clicking on Tools > Add-ons in the menubar. Locate the install button, click it and select the downloaded xpi file to install the Folderpane Tools extension.

The add-on offers two additional configuration options. It can override the startup folder, which is handy if a different folder should be displayed on the startup of Thunderbird.

The second option is to rearrange accounts. This is done by selecting an account in the listing and selecting the move up or move down button afterwards to move it to a new location. It is furthermore possible to select a new default account.

Folderpane Tools adds a missing feature to Thunderbird, and is therefor a recommended add-on for users who want to rearrange the account order in the email client. (via Caschy)

Mute Thread is a new experimental add-on for the Thunderbird email client that gives the user the ability to mute individual email threads. In theory, this means that muted threads do not appear anymore in the email client’s inbox.

The emails are not deleted, just hidden from view, and Thunderbird users can display them again by clicking on View > Threads > Ignored Threads in Thunderbird. It is necessary to switch to another mail folder temporarily to display the hidden messages again in the active folder.

Threads in Thunderbird can be muted by clicking on Message > Ignore Thread, or using the shortcut K for the same effect.

Mute Thread in its current stage is what the developers call an experimental add-on. This means that the devs have plans to integrate it into the email client eventually, but do not have an idea how and when this is going to happen.

Currently the devs are looking for one or two developers who would like to take over the project. The Mozilla Labs post offers additional details about Mute Thread and contact information for developers who would like to participate in the development of the add-on.

The add-on is available for download at the official Mozilla add-ons website. It is compatible with Thunderbird 3.1 to 3.3a only.

This results in a handful of independent contact databases, that are not linked to each other and often contain duplicate contacts.

Thunderbird Contacts is a new add-on by the Mozilla Labs Team that is based on Firefox Contacts. The add-on tries to evolve ” the address book of Thunderbird beyond what it currently is today”.

The idea behind the add-on originates from the fact that contact information are not necessarily only available in the address book of the email client, but also on websites and services.

Thunderbird Contacts currently supports services like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Yahoo!, LinkedIn and Plaxo, next to the Thunderbird address book and the Mac address book.

thunderbird contacts

The add-on adds a contacts link under the Tools menu after installation. Contacts opens in a new tab in the email client with four sub-tabs available that lead to the add-on’s functionality.

The default page, Contact Services, allows a Thunderbird user to connect the email client to supported web services in order to pull contact information from them.

The add-on automatically retrieves the information, and tries to merge the new contact information with existing information. In addition to that, the contact finder services setting tries to find additional information about a contact by trying to find a Facebook profile, Twitter account or Flickr profile among others.

Options are to enable finder services automatically when contacts are first added, when a contact is viewed, or when requested from the contact detail view.

contact finder services

A video has been created to demonstrate Thunderbird Contacts.

Thunderbird users who want to try Thunderbird Contacts can download the add-on from the Thunderbird add-on repository. The add-on is only compatible with Thunderbird 3.1x to 3.2x versions.

This lack of protection could be a problem if multiple users are using the computer or if other users have (theoretical) access to the PC which is often the case at work.

The following guide reviews two options on how to protect the Thunderbird email client to prevent unauthorized access to the data.

Password Protection Add-on

Thunderbird, just like Firefox, supports add-ons. Add-ons are small programs that increase or change the functionality of the email client.

Profile Password is a Thunderbird add-on that offers the means to password protect a Thunderbird profile. The extension adds a new entry to the Tools menu of the email client.

profile password

Thunderbird displays a password form on startup once a password has been set in the extension’s options.

This protection is generally considered to be weak, largely because of options to circumvent the protection. It is for instance possible to access the mails and other information directly in the Thunderbird profile directory.

It might provide enough protection in some situations but technical users will find a way around it eventually. This protection becomes stronger if IMAP accounts are used since the emails are by default not downloaded to the local computer system. Thunderbird 3 on the other hand makes use of email synchronization by default which downloads the messages to the local PC. This feature needs to be disabled in Account Settings –> Synchronization & Storage.

Using Encryption

Profile encryption is the only available option to protect a Thunderbird profile completely from access by third parties. The encryption software True Crypt is a popular choice as it is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

See Create a secure data safe with True Crypt for pointers on how to create an encrypted partition or container on your computer.

It’s more complicated to setup but yields the highest possible protection. The basic concept is to create an encrypted container or partition on the computer before moving the Thunderbird profile folder there.

Existing profiles need to be moved to the new location and Thunderbird configured to use that new location for storage.

The encrypted storage container needs to be mounted before Thunderbird can access the profile. The user basically needs to enter the password to decrypt the storage. This has to be done at least once in every computing session in which Thunderbird is needed. At least once means that it depends on the user’s handling of the encrypted storage after Thunderbird has been used. Some users might prefer to unmount the encrypted container to protect Thunderbird efficiently while others might prefer to keep it mounted to be able to access emails in Thunderbird faster.

The email Sender Verification extension for Mozilla Thunderbird integrates an automatic option to verify the senders into the email client. It basically tells the users if the sender that is shown in the from header of the email was the actual sender of the email. The extension uses the Sender Policy Framework and various reputation services like Spamhaus or Sender Score Certified to retrieve information about the domains.

The Sender verification add-on is compatible with Thunderbird 3. It adds a new column to the display of emails in the mail client which needs to be enabled. This is done by clicking on the header row icon that allows Thunderbird users to display additional columns with information in the client.

Sender Verify will look up all emails and display status information such as pass, fail, none or neutral to give the user an indication of the trustworthiness of particular emails.

The add-on displays information in the email’s header as well which gives further information that can be helpful to identify the email sender.

The Sender Verification extension is still in development but works fine as it is. The developer plans to add preferences, verification of hotmail accounts and other features to the extension in the future. The extension can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

It is therefor important to have the means to display the size of attachments in an email client prior to sending the email to make sure that the email will not be rejected by the mail server due to size limitations.

Displaying email attachment sizes can also be helpful for users who want to reduce the size of their mailbox.

Attachment Sizes is an add-on for the Thunderbird email client that adds size information to all attachments in the web browser. The file sizes are displayed next to each file so that its usually easy to determine the overall size of all attachments. The total size of all attachments is displayed when hovering the mouse cursor over the attachment area in the email client.

This does however only work when sending emails, not when the email has already been received. But the total size is not nearly as important in that case.

Attachment Sizes is compatible with all Thunderbird 3.x clients. It can be downloaded from the Mozilla Thunderbird add-on repository.

Update: The Thunderbird add-on is no longer necessary, as Thunderbird 3 is now displaying attachment sizes by default.

Another addition to the way conversations are displayed in Thunderbird is the Gmail Conversation View add-on. This add-on ports the way Gmail displays conversations to the Thunderbird email client. Each individual email is drawn with a border so that the computer user can distinguish them on first glance. The colored vertical lines are not needed in this view mode.

Installation of the add-on is unfortunately complicated. This can be attributed to the early experimental stage of the add-on above anything else. Gmail Conversation View requires the installation of either the Compact Header or the Customize Header Toolbar add-on.

Another step that is necessary (after installation of two of the add-ons) is the manual customization of the header toolbar in Thunderbird. This is done by right-clicking the email header and selecting customize. It is now important to drag and drop the button of the add-on – which is called View Full conversation – to the other buttons that are displayed in the email header.

A click on that new button will from now on change the view of that email from the standard Thunderbird view to the Gmail view. Those changes are temporary for now and gone as soon as the user moves away from that email conversation.

The developer has plans to extend the functionality. One interesting option would be to enable the Gmail conversation view mode permanently for all email conversations. Gmail Conversation View is compatible with all Thunderbird 3 versions. The latest version of the add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

Other additions included a filter to only display add-ons specifically for one product. The latest addition to those pages is a language filter which can be used to display only add-ons that are offered in a specific language.

The displayed language filter uses information provided by the url that is accessed to display the filter. You might recall that the Mozilla website uses language encodings as part of their url structure.

A visitor from the United States would therefor be able to filter the add-ons so that only English add-ons would be displayed, a German would be able to do the same for add-ons that are provided with a German interface.

It sometimes happens that users land on a Mozilla page that is displayed in a different language which can be the case when following links from websites for example. The Mozilla website displays a pulldown menu at the bottom that allows the visitor to switch to another supported language.

This new feature can be helpful for users who prefer to use add-ons that are provided in their native language.

But quotes can also increase the length of an email message. It is not seldom that the quotes exceed the message that is send by a factor of 10 or more. Collapse Quotes for the Thunderbird email client offers a solution for this.

The Thunderbird add-on will automatically collapse all quotes in emails by default. The first words of the first quote are still displayed in a line that contains a plus icon on the left side which can be used to expand the quotes.

Holding down shift while clicking on the plus icon will expand all quotes whereas the CTRL key will expand all quotes of the same nesting level. The developer of the add-on is offering customization information on the project website which can be used for example to change the style so that the first level of quotes are always expanded (and the rest is collapsed).

Collapse Quotes is available at the Mozilla projects website where it can be downloaded for Thunderbird 2 and 3.

Experienced users know the workarounds that can force compatibility with a specific version of Firefox or Thunderbird. But what if that is not always necessary? What if the version that is displayed in the directory listing or on individual add-on pages is not the latest version?

That’s right. In my quest to uncover why the date sorting at the Mozilla website did not sort the add-ons by the dates displayed I uncovered the reason for this and the secret that newer versions are sometimes available but not displayed.

Take the coLT add-on for example. Its profile page states that the add-on is compatible with Firefox: 1.5 – 3.5.* only which removes the install button from the page if you visit it with Firefox 3.6 for example. You will also notice the date the add-on was last updated which in this case is listed as August 2009.

If you scroll down the page you come to a link called view older versions. It will still state that the latest version was released in August and that the latest version is 2.4.5.

The page that lists the older versions on the other hand reveals something interesting. This page has been designed to provide users with access to older versions if the latest version is causing troubles for them. The first version on that page however is 2.4.6, the release date is listed as December 2 and the compatibility is listed as 1.5 – 3.6.*.

The version of the add-on listed there is compatible with Firefox 3.6 while the version on the profile page and in the directory was not. The add-on can therefor be installed without forcing compatibility. These new versions sometimes even contain bug fixes or new features that the older but more prominent versions do not offer.

What do we learn from that?

• The date the add-on was last updated is December 2 and not August. This is the reason why it is listed on the first pages if you sort the add-ons by date
• The version that is listed on the profile page and in the directory listings is not necessarily the latest version.
• The view old versions link can actually contain newer versions of the add-on.
• It is therefor worth the time to check out if that link lists a newer version if the version on the profile page is not compatible with the version of the Mozilla software installed

My guess is that it has something to do with certifying the newest version. Some parameters are already added to the database (like the date) while others are not until it is certified. This method works best if add-ons are sorted by date.

The Thunderbird add-on tbNotes adds note taking capabilities to the email software. It’s current version is limited to Thunderbird 3 editions which are currently only available as beta versions (the official download version is still Thunderbird 2.x at the time of writing).

The add-on adds the capabilities to add, edit and remove notes in Thunderbird. The functionality becomes available after right-clicking an email message in Thunderbird. This opens the context menu with options to write, edit or remove notes.

It would be very confusing if there would not be an indicator if a note is available for an email. Users of the note taking add-on can add a new column to the email table layout in Thunderbird that indicates if notes are available.

This column is not available by default and needs to be added to the layout by clicking on the rightmost icon in the header display. It is furthermore possible to display all notes on a separate page in the email client. Filters are available on the page to reduce the amount of notes that are shown there. The page can be accessed at Tools > Notes.

The developer has lots of plans to extend the functionality of the add-on. Planned are a sidebar with notes categories or a special folder containing all the notes, adding notes to Thunderbird search and Lighting support so that notes can get automatically synced with the calendar add-on.

The tbNotes add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla Thunderbird website. Keep in mind that it only works with Thunderbird 3.x clients.

Update: tbNotes has been discontinued. XNote is an excellent alternative that adds note taking again to the email client.

Update 2: XNote has been discontinued as well. An Alternative note taking extension for Thunderbird is QuickNote.

The process is very simply. The Thunderbird add-on will automatically display an option to unsubscribe from support mailing lists in the header of the emails that are send to the accounts that are managed in the desktop email client.

The Thunderbird user needs to click on the unsubscribe link in the header to initiate the process of unsubscribing from the mailing lists. This will display a prompt informing the user that the add-on will open a new email message which, when send by the user, will unsubscribe the email address from the mailing list.

The email usually consists of an email address of the service that send the mailing list email and subject unsubscribe in the email subject with no body text at all. The unsubscribe link is only displayed for mailing lists that use the Inxmail email marketing service which is used by global brands such as Coca Cola. The add-on is compatible with Thunderbird 2 and Thunderbird 3 up to beta 3 which excludes the latest release of Thunderbird 3 beta. The add-on can however be forced to be compatible with the Nightly Tester Tools. A download is available at the Thunderbird website over at Mozilla.

Mail Merge is an experimental Thunderbird add-on that increases the email client’s mass mailing capabilities. It does so by introducing two new options to the email software: Mass Mail and Personal Mail.

Mass Mail

Mass Mail is ingenious. The user writing the email starts by writing one email that should be send out to all recipients. This includes the title, body and possible attachments. Then all recipients are added to that email in the appropriate fields. A click on the Mass Mail button (available under File > Mass Mail) will now create individual emails for each email recipient and put them in the outbox of the email client. Each recipient will therefor get an individual email message so that no other email addresses appear in the mail header.

Personal Mail

One problem of the Mass Mail approach is that the emails cannot address the individual. Adding Hej Frank to a mass mail would send that greeting to all other recipients as well. That’s where Personal Mail comes into play. Personal Mail makes use of variables and csv files to address individuals in mass mailings. Variables can be added to any field in the email in the form {{Variable}}. It is for instance possible to write an email like the following:

To: {{Mail}}
Subject: {{ID}}: Notification
Body: Hi {{Name}}, this email …

The selection of File > Personal Mail after writing the email will open a dialog with the mandatory option to load a csv file containing the information. The developer does not describe how the csv should look like and I was not able to figure it out on my own. Users who would like to make use of that feature might want to contact the developer directly. The email address is published at the Mozilla Thunderbird page of the add-on. Mail Merge is compatible with both Thunderbird 2 and 3 and can be downloaded from the official Mozilla website.

The string sorting option can be very interesting for users of webmail accounts that support Unicode characters like Gmail. The default sorting order in Thunderbird would change the sort order of the Gmail folder as Thunderbird does not use these characters in the sorting process.

The manual folder sorting on the other hand gives the user the versatile option to sort the folders exactly how they should look like without having to care about a specific sort order. It could take longer to sort but in the end it should be the most comfortable for the user.

Manually Sort Folders is available for Thunderbird 3 only. It can be downloaded at the Mozilla Thunderbird website.

The only available option to customize the archive is the advanced config editor which makes it possible to change the archiving granularity, names and other settings. The Thunderbird 3 add-on Message Archive Options is basically a frontend for the advanced config options.

There are two options that the add-on offers. The first allows the Thunderbird user to customize the granularity of the archiving function in Thunderbird. It is first and foremost possible to switch from the one folder per year structure to either to a single folder structure or one with months as the additional levels. The date format for the year and year – month structure can be altered as well.

The second option is to add a key modifier to the archiving shortcut. It is possible to add Alt, Shift or Control to [a] to archive the selected email messages.

Message Archive Options does not invent the wheel anew but it offers easier access to customizing the email archive in Thunderbird 3. The add-on is only compatible with Thunderbird 3 and available at the Mozilla website.

The installation is slightly more complicated than the usual add-on installation. The reason for this is Language Tool needs to run as a local server. There is an option to use a remote server but this would mean that the email contents would be transferred back and forth to that server which obviously raises privacy concerns.

The developer of the grammar checking add-on for Thunderbird has published explanations on how to setup the local server and configure the add-on in Thunderbird to use that server. In short: All it takes is to run the server from the web start option provided at the Language Tool website. This will download the files to the local computer system and provide an option to start the tool as a server (File->Option and select “Run as server”:) The server settings need to be changed in the extension’s preferences.

Grammar Checker is an experimental add-on that can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

Most Thunderbird users probably do not need some of the information and options provided by default. This includes for example the information to whom the email was send or the action buttons like deleting emails which are also available on a right-click in the email itself.

That’s where the experimental add-on Compact Headers comes into play. The add-on is compatible with Thunderbird 3 only and can reduce the size of the email header to one row.

Thunderbird 3 Default Email Header:

Thunderbird 3 Compact Email Header:

The way the email header is displayed in compact form can be altered in the add-on’s options. It is possible to increase the size to two rows which can also hold some of the buttons that are provided in the standard Thunderbird header. Buttons can be individually selected in the options.

Compact Header for Mozilla Thunderbird 3 is an experimental add-on that is not automatically updating itself. The add-on comes with a “check for updates” button in the options. It is available at the Mozilla Thunderbird add-on repository at Mozilla.org.

Fox Clock will add clocks to the Thunderbird status bar. Those clocks – unlike in Firefox – will be displayed next to each other in the desktop email program. This is more comfortable as all clocks are visible all the time opposed to the one clock that is visible in Firefox.

The add-on comes with additional options to configure the time format, position and style, time zone data and more. That’s another positive aspect of the add-on when compared to its Firefox counterpart. The clocks can be displayed on the left or right side of the Thunderbird status bar. An alternative is the option to display them as a toolbar instead which could then be placed in the Thunderbird header area.

Fox Clocks in an helpful add-on for email users who regularly correspond with email users from other places in the world. The Thunderbird add-on is compatible with all versions of Thunderbird. It can be downloaded from the official Mozilla Thunderbird website.

A third option is provided by the Thunderbird add-on eMarks which supposedly stands for email bookmarks. The add-on adds a new toolbar to the email client. Emails can then be dragged and dropped into that toolbar easily. This makes these emails available from every folder the user might be in. These emails are then accessible with a left-click of the mouse. Thunderbird will automatically switch to the folder the email is stored in and display it in the preview pane.

A right-click on any bookmarked email will open a context menu with options to open the email in a new window or tab and to rename or delete it. Users who prefer no additional toolbar in the email client can disable it and access the bookmarked emails from the file menu at the top. An emarks entry is added by the extension that can be used to access the bookmarked emails with three clicks of the mouse. Not as comfortable as the toolbar solution but better if space is an issue.

The eMarks extension for the Mozilla Thunderbird email client is available at the Mozilla Thunderbird website. It is compatible with all the latest versions of the desktop email client (including Thunderbird 3 beta).

Image Zoom has been designed with simplicity in mind. A right-click on any image on a website will open a context menu after installation of the extension with options to zoom in and out of the selected image.

Right-clicking and using the context menu is however not the only option to zoom images. Another possibility is to right-click and use the mouse wheel to zoom an image. That’s usually more comfortable than the context menu solution. Other options that are provided include page zooming, fitting an image to the screen size of the web browser or email client and custom zoom and dimension options.

Some add-ons can interfere with some of the options provided by the Image Zoom extension. Especially add-ons that make use of the mouse buttons, like the recently reviewed Multi Links add-on, can block some of the functions. Image Zoom offers some options to configure the mouse buttons that trigger the zooming. It can be downloaded from the Thunderbird or Firefox website.