I tried a lot of “internal” fixes, like removing the msf files so that Thunderbird would regenerate them, or reinstalling the program to see if that would resolve the problem.

Unfortunately though nothing did. I did notice that my mail was still there which was reassuring to say the least.

I first thought about backing up all emails to Mailstore and starting anew, but this would have meant that I would have to juggle between two programs (the new Thunderbird and Mailstore) for a while.

I kept the option in mind and decided to play around with profiles first. First thing I did was to add -profilemanager to the end of the Thunderbird startup command to launch the profile manager during start up.

You can do that by locating the Thunderbird shortcut in the taskbar or start menu. Right-click it and select Properties from the options. Look for the Target field and add -profilemanager at the end of the command. This launches the profile manager before the email client is started. A profile is like a new user account for Thunderbird.

I decided to create a new profile. This is a simple process, all you need to do is to click on create profile and enter a name if you like. Exit the window afterwards.

Now for the difficulty part. Locate your Thunderbird profile folder on your hard drive. Windows users find the profile under C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\

Note that you should see at least two profiles listed there. For the sake of simplicity, we assume you see two profiles. First your original profile with all your emails, and then your secondary profile that you have just created. We are now going to move important data from the old profile to the new one. Important data in this regards are all emails, contact information and preferences.

Locate the Mail (and if you like ImapMail) folder in your old profile and copy it to the new profile. Look into the root folder of the profile and copy the following files to the new profile: all abook*.mab files, all prefs files, all signons files.

Once done start Thunderbird using the new profile. Please note that you need to enter the mailbox passwords again. All extensions and other customizations are not moved. I’d suggest to install them anew, but you could try and move them from the old to the new profile.

You should now see all your mailboxes in the new profile. The preferences should be the same as in the old profile, as we have moved the preference files to the new profile as well.

This process has resolved the issue on my end. I selected the new profile to be started with Thunderbird automatically, and removed the profilemanager command from the startup.

Have you ever experienced issues with an email client? What did you do to resolve them?

With Firefox it is another issue. The browser just stops receiving traffic from the Internet as if it is blocked by a firewall or as if the Internet connection died. The only solution here so far was to restart the web browser.

David Bradley now has found a solution that fixed the Thunderbird lag issue, and probably the Firefox no traffic issue as well.

David mentioned frequent stutter or lag in the browser leading to the “not responding” message that can last for a few moments. This was the same behavior that I experienced in Thunderbird.

The solution or fix here is to assign one specific core to the Firefox, or in my case Thunderbird, process. This obviously only works if a multi-core cpu is available.

Users who just want to test the setting can assign a specific core by opening the Windows Task Manager with Ctrl-Shift-Esc, right-clicking the firefox.exe or thunderbird.exe process and selecting Affinity from the context menu.

Here they need to select a specific cpu core or remove one from the listing to test the fix. Please note that this is only a temporary solution. A system state change, e.g. a reboot, standby or hibernation resets the affinity settings there.

A permanent solution is to create a new program shortcut and set the cpu affinity this way.

The command for Firefox is this one:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\” /affinity x firefox.exe

where x is the cpu core number. (cpu 0 = 1, cpu 1 = 2, cpu 2 = 4, cpu 3 = 8 and so on).

For Thunderbird the command is

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start “C:\Program Files (x86)\Miramar 3.3 Alpha 1\thunderbird.exe” /affinity x thunderbird.exe

The easiest way is to copy the shortcut from the start menu or to use Windows Explorer to open the folder where the program is installed. There you can right-click firefox.exe or thunderbird.exe and select to create a new shortcut.

It is likely that we will see an official fix in the coming days / weeks. You can then simply delete the shortcut or modify it again so that all cpu cores are used by the application. It is unlikely that this change has an effect on the program’s performance.

Windows XP users cannot make use of the command. The suggestion here is to use the freeware RunFirst which sets the process affinity automatically to one core.

Has this fixed your issue as well? Let me know in the comments. (thanks David, via)

As you can see, lots of border and toolbar transparency. You basically have two options at your disposal to get rid of the Aero theme and transparency that comes with it: Install a different theme.

Ignore Aero

Ignore Aero is a theme for the Thunderbird email client that disables some, but not all, of the Aero effects. The title bar and borders still use transparency, while the other toolbars do not.

The extension is not an ideal solution for users who want to get rid of Aero completely, as it reduces the Aero effects only in the email client. You can download the Ignore Aero add-on for Thunderbird from the Mozilla Thunderbird Extension repository.

Alternative themes that pretty much have the same effect are NoGlass or Classic Reloaded.

Compatibility Workaround

You can run Thunderbird in compatibility mode to disable Aero automatically and only for that program and no others running on the system. For that you need to right-click the Thunderbird shortcut that you click on when you start the email program and select Properties from the context menu. Switch to the Compatibility tab in the Thunderbird Properties window.

Enable “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select Windows XP (Service Pack 3) from the options.

Running Thunderbird in compatibility mode has the same effect as installing one of the themes mentioned earlier in this article. The title bar and borders remain transparent, the other toolbars turn solid.

Disable Aero transparency

If you dislike the Aero transparency, you can disable it in Windows 7 by right-clicking on your desktop and selecting Personalize from the options. You then need to click on Window Color at the bottom of the Personalization window. Here you can uncheck “Enable Transparency” to disable it completely or use the color intensity slider to modify it.

Inspiration for this post taken from Ask VG.

There are even extensions that synchronize data with social networking sites. We have reviewed Thunderbird Contacts in the past which can be used for that purpose.

Most users open the Thunderbird address book from within the email client. That’s great as long as the program is already open. But what if you want to open the address book when Thunderbird is not running on the system?

You could of course start Thunderbird on the computer before opening the address book via Tools > Address Book or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-B.

Or, you could create a new shortcut on your computer that opens the Thunderbird address book directly and without starting the email client itself.

Navigate to the Mozilla Thunderbird folder on your computer. The default installation folder under Windows is C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\

Right-click the thunderbird.exe file and select Create Shortcut. Save it in that directory or alternatively on the desktop if restrictions prevent the saving in the same directory.

Right-click the shortcut afterwards and select Properties from the context menu. Locate the Target path in the Shortcut tab and add -addressbook at the end of it (there is a blank between the closing ” and the -addressbook).

Select Apply and OK afterwards. Double-click the shortcut. If everything went right, you should now see the address book open up immediately. If something went wrong, retrace the steps to correct the error.

I understand that some studies have suggested that it is actually faster to leave all mails in the inbox. I on the other hand believe that my system is better suited for accessing all important emails immediately after they have arrived. (sorry cannot find a link to the study right now)

The Thunderbird email client comes with powerful message filtering options. You can access the filtering management window with a click on Tools > Message Filters.

Thunderbird can apply filters to a specific email account or all email accounts.

Select an email address or the global Mail address from the pulldown list at the top of the screen. A click on New opens the message filter configuration screen. Each filter is configured with four parameters.

• Name: A unique name. Best option is a name that identifies the filter on first glance.
• When to apply: When to run the filter.
• Match: The data of the message that needs to match the entered information.
• Actions: The actions that are executed when a message matches a filter.

Any or all rules need to match for the actions to be executed. It is alternatively possible to run a filter on all messages. Rules consist of three parts. First a data field or custom field, then a state and lastly a custom string.

A data field can be the message subject, body, data, priority status, age, size, tags, recipients, senders and a lot more. The state basically defines if the email needs to contain the selected string or not.

Basic examples are

• Subject > Contains > Ghacks
• Priority > Is higher than > Normal
• To > Is in my address book > Personal Address Book

The actions are executed if the selected rules match. Basic actions include moving, copying or deleting email messages. Other options include setting tags or stars, setting the emails junk status, deleting it from pop3 servers or replying to it automatically with an email template.

Filters can not only be executed when new emails arrive, but also on existing mailboxes. Just select a mailbox in the main Message Filters window and click the Run Now button to execute all filters on the selected mailbox or folder.

As a side note. Thunderbird users can create from filters right from the message preview area or the mail viewing window. A right-click on an email address in the email header opens a context menu with an option to create a new from filter.

And that’s how you create message filters in the Thunderbird desktop email client.

Are you using filters in Thunderbird or another email software? Let me know in the comments.

I decided to investigate the issue to find a way to force compatibility in Thunderbird 3.3. The following guide should help all Thunderbird 3.x users who need to make an extension compatible.

I knew of three methods to force compatibility in Firefox and since the programs share the same core it felt natural to begin there.

The best working method after some tests is in my opinion to override compatibility enforcement in the email client’s configuration. This is done the following way:

Start Thunderbird and open the configuration window by clicking on Tools > Options first. This opens the options window. Go to Advanced > General and click on the Config Editor button there.

The config editor opens in a new window. The directive does not exist by default which means that it needs to be added first. The general format of the parameter looks the following way:

extensions.checkCompatibility.Version

The version is always separated with a dot, e.g. 3.3. If Thunderbird is a release version that’s all that needs to be added. Alpha and beta versions on the other hand need to be specified individually by adding an a for alpha or b for beta behind the version.

The compatibility parameter for Thunderbird 3.3 alpha 2 is therefor

extensions.checkCompatibility.3.3a

To add it right-click in the configuration window and select New > Boolean from the list. A form pops up. enter the parameter name, e.g. extensions.checkCompatibility.3.3a and click ok. Now you need to select if the Boolean value should be true or false. True in this case is the default value which means that Thunderbird will check for extension compatibility. Since we do not want that we set the value to false. Restart the email client and install your extensions. Inactive extensions that have been inactivated because of incompatibilities should show up as activated.

And this is the result in the extension listing

Please note that forcing compatibility is no guarantee that the extension will actually work in Thunderbird. It is helpful if an extension developer has not updated the extension yet that is otherwise compatible with the version of Thunderbird.

But how do you get your Thunderbird emails to the new computer? It is actually very easy to do providing that the old data is still available and readable.

First thing you need to do is to locate the Thunderbird profile directory on the old hard drive or computer. The profile stores all account information including emails in the inbox, send out, email account information and attachments.

Check the Mozilla Zine article for the paths. Make sure the data is available on the new computer, either by connecting the hard drive to the computer or copying the data to CD, DVD or removable storage devices.

Install Mozilla Thunderbird on the new computer but do not run it after installation if possible. The first run creates a profile on the new computer. Now copy the full profile directory from the old hard drive to the new computer or new hard drive. Make sure that you copy it using the right path information taken from the Mozilla Zine article.

If you already run Thunderbird you have a profile already. Do not worry, it is not that bad. You can simply copy the data from the old Thunderbird profile folder into the new profile. Please note that this will remove all information stored in the new profile which means that if you have setup email accounts and received emails, well, they are gone after that process.

If you do not want that you can copy the data next to the existing profile folder. It is not the best solution though as you can only launch one profile which means you would need to switch between profiles or find a way to merge them.

Last time I checked my Thunderbird plugin list had 12 different plugins enable which was quite the shock, considering that I did not need a single one of them.

I made the decision to disable all plugins, mainly because I did not need a single one. But there are other reasons why it may make sense to disable them.

Plugins are loaded with the email client which means that they occupy memory even if they are not needed. Disabling them will free up some memory and maybe even improve performance which is always a good thing.

Then there is security which can be a reason as well. Plugins sometimes have security vulnerabilities which means that not only the web browser but also the email client may be vulnerable to exploits.

Most users should disable all plugins in Thunderbird. There may be some that use the client to display feeds or web pages. Those users may want to keep some plugins enabled, Flash for instance to view Flash contents. The majority of plugins installed and enabled however are not likely needed at all.

To disable or enable plugins users need to click on Tools > Add-Ons in the Thunderbird menu and switch to the plugins sidebar item there. Plugins that are disabled show that in brackets behind the name. The button disable disables the plugin and enable will enable it again if the need arises.

Mozilla Thunderbird offers a setting to change this behavior, which is fortunately for users like me who prefer to reply to messages on top of all other messages.

Thunderbird users find the setting in the Account Settings. A click on Tools > Account Settings opens the menu with all configured email accounts. It is necessary to make the change to every email account separately.

Locate Composition & Addressing below an email account and there the setting “Automatically quote the original message when replying”. A pulldown menu below reads “Then start reply below the quote”. Change that to “start my reply above the quote” to always start the reply above the quotes.

There is another option to place the email signature below the reply and not the quote.

If you look at the example on the screenshot above you see that it is not possible to identify the file extension or full name of the email attachment. Sure, you can hover the file to see the full name of the attachment, but imagine having to do that not for one but for multiple files, every day.

The first thing that I did to find out if there was a setting for this was to look in the email client’s options, but the results were frustrating. No option, not even in the config editor. Second best bet was an extension, and again the search was fruitless.

The last option was to make changes to the userchrome.css file to manipulate the display in the email program. And this works. Here is what you need to do.

Locate your Thunderbird profile directory on your computer system. You can check Mozillazine for detailed information on how to locate the Thunderbird profile folder. In short:

• Windows XP / 2000: C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\
• Windows Vista / 7: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\\
• Linux: ~/.thunderbird// or ~/.mozilla-thunderbird
• Mac OS: ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles// or ~/Library/Application Support/Thunderbird/Profiles//

Now that you know where the profile folder is located you need to open it in a system file browser. Locate or create the chrome folder in the root Thunderbird profile folder and locate or create the file userchrome.css in there. The easiest way to create the userchrome.css file is to create a simple text document and rename it. Ensure that the file extension is .css and not .txt.

Open the file afterwards and add the following line to it:

#attachmentBucket, .attachmentBox {min-width: 25em;}

The important parameter is 25em at the end. This defines the width of the attachment area for each attachment in Thunderbird. Depending on the attachment names you get you may want to increase or decrease the value to make the box wider or smaller.

You need to restart Thunderbird before the changes become visible. As you can see in the example from my system, the email client now displays the attachment’s name in full.

Sometimes email account information, such as the username and password, need to be retrieved. A user may want to configure the email provider on another computer, a mobile device like a smartphone or access the email directly if the provider offers webmail as well.

Thunderbird, like most other email clients, hides the passwords by default, but provides an option to display them in the password manager. This is similar to the way the Firefox web browser handles stored passwords.

For added security, a master password can be configured that needs to be entered before the stored email account information can be accessed by the user.

To recover or change Thunderbird passwords do the following:

• Open the email client Thunderbird. We are using the 3.1 branch in this guide.
• Click on Tools > Options, and switch to Security > Passwords.
• Click on the Saved Passwords button. This displays a list of all email accounts with a saved passwords. This list may contain old email clients that are no longer in use. Those can be deleted by the user by selecting them first and hitting the remove button thereafter.
• All email account passwords that are stored in Thunderbird can be displayed by clicking on Show Passwords. The very same listing displays the username, and site (that is the email provider) as well.
• To change passwords, simply select the email account that needs to be changed and click on the Remove button. Next time Thunderbird tries to retrieve emails from removed accounts, it will prompt for a password for that account.

thunderbird passwords

saved passwords

And that’s how you recover or change passwords in the Thunderbird email software. As you can see, this can also be helpful to remove passwords and email account information that are no longer in use in the email client.

The Thunderbird email client supports both plain text and HTML emails. The account settings hold the default preference for each email account in the mail client. This only affects email messages that are created in Thunderbird, not messages that are received.

html emails

The preference for incoming emails is found under View > Message Body As. Here it is possible to switch from the default Original HTML to Simple HTML or Plain Text.

incoming emails plain text

This preference is valid for all incoming emails, regardless of the email address they have been sent to.

Original HTML

If you choose View – Message Body As – Original HTML, then you see HTML messages in their original form, except that:

* For privacy reasons you can choose not to allow messages to run JavaScript code.
* For privacy reasons you can choose not to allow messages to download remote images.
* Some messages might contain non-standard HTML that Thunderbird does not support.

For privacy settings, choose: Options (Preferences) – Privacy – General

Note: There are normally no security issues when you read a message in Thunderbird. It is not normally possible for hostile code to attack your computer just because you read a message. But if you open an attachment, then Thunderbird passes the attachment to your operating system or to some other application. Your operating system or the other application might allow the attachment to attack your computer.

Simple HTML

If you choose View – Message Body As – Simple HTML, then you see HTML messages in a simplified form. Thunderbird does not run JavaScript code, and does not download remote images. Simple HTML preserves basic HTML formatting.

Plain text

If the message is plain text, then you always see plain text.

If you choose View – Message Body As – Plain Text, then you see plain text even if the message is really HTML. If the message is multipart, then you see the plain text part. Otherwise Thunderbird converts the HTML message to plain text.

Thunderbird normally enhances plain text by supporting certain HTML-like features:

• Bold, italic and underlined text.
• Smileys displayed as images.
• Attached images displayed in the body of the message.
• Links displayed in blue, and underlined.
• Flowed paragraphs (if the message was sent using flowed paragraphs)
• Quoted paragraphs outlined with colored bars (if the message was sent using flowed paragraphs)
• Signatures displayed in gray.

The supported smileys are:
:-) :) smile
:-D laughing
:-( :( frown
:-[ embarassed
;-) ;) wink
:-\ undecided
:-P ;-P tongue
=-O surprise

:-* kiss
>:o >:-o yell
8-) cool
:-$ money
:-! foot
O:-) innocent
:'( cry
:-X sealed

It sometimes may be necessary to write HTML emails and plain text emails, depending on the recipient. While it is possible to switch the format in the account settings, it is possible to make a temporary switch when composing emails.

Holding down the Shift key before clicking on create a new message, or one of the reply options, switches from the default writing mode to the other.

Thunderbird will automatically display the plain text email editor if HTML emails are the default, and vice verse if the Shift key is pressed.

The composition window will display HTML elements like bold or underline if an HTML message is composed, or no text formatting options if it is a plain text email.

HTML Email composition window

html email

Plain Text composition window

plain text email

Holding down the shift key is the fastest way of switching between HTML and plain text composition windows.

So what’s the deal with JavaScript and Thunderbird? The Thunderbird developers have apparently decided to remove JavaScript support in Thunderbird 3.

Due to various security considerations. Javascript has been disabled completely in message content (the javascript.allow.mailnews preference no longer has any effect). Javascript is enabled for remote content including RSS feeds.

JavaScript is still available for RSS feeds but not in message content. To begin with, this change likely affects only a minority of Thunderbird users, with most probably not even knowing that JavaScript was enabled at a time in the email client.

The definite answer at this point is that the developer’s have no intention of adding JavaScript again to the program. There is currently no config option or add-on that will bring back JavaScript in Thunderbird 3.

Thunderbird 3 users who read RSS feeds in the application might want to consider disabling JavaScript in this context as well to improve the security of the client. JavaScript is usually not needed to read RSS feeds although some media feeds might require it.

Here is how this is done:

Open the Tools > Options menu in Thunderbird. Switch to the Advanced tab and click the Config Editor button in the General sub-tab.

thunderbird 3 options

Confirm to be careful if this menu is opened for the first time. Enter JavaScript in the filter and locate the parameter JavaScript.enabled. Double-click that parameter to set it to false.

thunderbird javascript

This disables JavaScript for RSS feeds in Thunderbird 3. Scripts that are included are ignored by Thunderbird. It is not clear if a restart is required, it is recommended to restart to make sure the new setting is recognized by Thunderbird.

The user agent tells them the program or service that was used to send the email which can help evaluate the validity of the email. It should be noted however that the user agent is not always displayed.

It might raise suspicion for instance if a user has send emails from a specific program in the past while the latest email uses a different service or program.

Thunderbird users who want to add the user agent to the header information in the email software need to perform the following steps:

• Access the Options by clicking on Tools > Options in the header menu of Thunderbird.
• Switch to the Advanced tab and click on Config Editor, accept the warning message.
• Filter for the parameter mailnews.headers.showUserAgent
• Double-click the parameter to set it to true
• A restart might be required before the information are displayed.

The changes can be reverted by performing the same steps again. Do you have Thunderbird tips of your own? Let us hear them in the comments.

If you open Mozilla Thunderbird in the classic view you are looking at a window that is divided into two areas. The left sidebar contains the email folders while the right window the emails that are contained in the folders and the contents of the selected email.

Thunderbird displays the same icon in the header of the folder and email area to change email display options. The display options can be accessed by left-clicking on the icon which will reveal several display options that can be enabled or disabled with another left-click.

The folder pane offers the three additional display options unread, total and size. Unread will display the unread count of folders, total the total amount of emails in a folder and size the size of that folder on the computer’s hard drive. These options offer several new ways of working with Thunderbird. It is for example possible to see the largest folders or the folders with the highest unread email count on a glance.

The very same display option menu is available in the email list in the right pane. This one contains additional display options that will display the information in additional columns in the same window. This includes sizes, email accounts, recipients, tags and about a dozen more.

These options can again be used to display additional information providing options to display and sort emails by size, recipients or email accounts. The two email display options described in the paragraphs before can for example be used to discover and delete the biggest attachments or emails of a webmail account like Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Live Mail.

All these parameters are handled in the Thunderbird configuration file. To get there click on [Tools] then [Options] to open the visible settings. Now click on the [Advanced] tab and there on the [Config Editor] entry which should open the Thunderbird configuration file which resembles that of the Firefox web browser.

Filter for the term [mailnews.reply] which should display nine entries that define several options when replying to emails in the Thunderbird email client.

Probably the most interesting parameters in these options are:

• mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote – Change the default [%s wrote] to something else. The [%s] variable defines the name of the writer of the original email.
• mailnews.reply_header_ondate – Change the default [On %s] to something else. The [%s] variable defines the date the original email was received.
• mailnews.reply_header_originalmessage – Change the default [-------- Original Message --------] to something else or remove it completely if you feel it is not needed.

You can change a value by double-clicking on its line in the configuration menu of the Thunderbird email client.

This was bad news as the system received hundreds of emails per day with a good percentage of it being spam. There had to be an explanation for this; And there was. Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 was previously installed on the test system. The security program made use of an anti-spam module which checked all incoming emails for spam. It integrated itself nicely into Mozilla Thunderbird at that time.

After uninstalling Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 the junk mail controls stopped working in Thunderbird. It was an almost sure bet that this was related to Kaspersky. To verify this assumption the software was installed again. It turned out that the mail filter in Thunderbird started working again after the installation completed (even before a restart) which confirmed that the problem was related to Kaspersky.

The next assumption was that the email client Thunderbird had to be closed before the uninstallation of the security software. It could have been a rights-problem that the uninstaller could not edit Thunderbird related files that were in use on the system.

After closing Mozilla Thunderbird the uninstallation of Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 went through without problems. The important part however was that the Junk Filter in Thunderbird was still working as intended.

To see a broader picture: It does not necessarily have to be Kaspersy Internet Security 2009 that causes those problems after uninstallation. Basically any application that interferes with the junk mail filters can cause a similar problem. Good to know that it can be solved that easily.

Update:

There is another option if that is not working in first place. All you need to do is disable the anti-spam module in the Kaspersky software to disable it before uninstalling the software. This way the Thunderbird junk filter will keep on working after the uninstallation.

Table 2 Clipboard is a Thunderbird extension that adds this much needed feature to Thunderbird. The extension can be used to copy a table or part of it to the clipboard retaining the format of it. Pasting that data into a spreadsheet will put the data into rows and columns just like the original data was.

The add-on has to be downloaded from Mozilla and installed using the Tools > Addons menu in Thunderbird. A click on Install in that menu will open a file browser where the downloaded extension has to be selected.

The extension adds two entries to the right-click context menu. The first is always available which will copy the whole table to the clipboard. The second is only available when CTRL-selecting table cells to copy only those selected cells to the clipboard. A shortcut CTRL Shift C is also available to copy selected table cells to the clipboard.

The Thunderbird extension could be useful for Thunderbird users who regularly receive tables in their emails that are embedded in the message’s body and not attached in separate files.

Thunderbird is creating the nstmp folders when it is compacting folders. When Thunderbird is interrupted during folder compacting it will not delete the nstmp folders that contain the temporary emails of the process up to the point where the compacting process was stopped. Compacting will stop when Thunderbird is (accidentaly or due to a crash) closed during compacting or when a new email arrives during that operation.

Those nstmp folders can normally be deleted but a user should check the original folder to make sure that it still contains all the mails that are listed in the nstmp folder. If that is the case the folder can be easily deleted by right-clicking it and selecting delete from the context menu.

The Thunderbird add-on can be installed as usual by downloading the file to the computer and installing it from the Tools > Add-ons menu in Thunderbird. Before it can be used it has to be configured. It actually provides two different possibilities to sync the contacts. Both, Google and Zimbra, require a server address, username and password to function properly. I cannot really say much about Zimbra because I’ve never heard about it before. It seems to be a service that gives access to several mail accounts in one interface.

After adding the required information a test connection can be used to see if the connection to the server is successful. By default auto sync is enabled which means that the contacts will automatically be synced.

Please note that syncing means that both the Gmail account as well as the Thunderbird address book will contain the same contacts in the end. Auto Sync is trigged by two parameters that can be configured in the Thunderbird config (Tools > Options > Advanced > Config Editor), they are:

• extensions.zindus.system.as_timer_delay_on_start – the number of seconds after startup
• extensions.zindus.system.as_timer_delay_on_repeat – the number of seconds after the first auto-sync

The following information are synced between Gmail and Thunderbird:

• Full Name
• Primary Email address and Second Email address
• Phone Numbers: Home, Work, Work Fax, Pager, Mobile
• Instant Messaging (AIM)
• Company and Title
• Notes

Zindus is compatible to the latest official version of Thunderbird and Thunderbird 3 alpha.