Thunderbird powered by SoftMaker

Martin Brinkmann
May 23, 2016
Updated • May 25, 2016
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Thunderbird, powered by SoftMaker, is a custom version of the popular email client featuring enhancements that come all in the form of extensions.

Thunderbird 45 and 45.1 were released recently by the team of volunteers that kept and keeps Thunderbird alive ever since Mozilla decided to get rid of the Thunderbird project.

This new version of the popular desktop email client was the first in a long time that featured a significant number of changes and fixes.

SoftMaker, a company best known for its SoftMaker Office suite, announced recently that it plans to include the Thunderbird email client into the 2016 version of the office suite.

In addition to that, it announced that it will provide the Thunderbird team with an experienced developer on a full-time basis to work on the email client and Lightning calendar.

Thunderbird powered by SoftMaker

Thunderbird powered by Softmaker is core Thunderbird but with optional add-ons that users can install to enhance the email program in several ways.

The following add-ons are provided currently:

  1. SoftMaker Theme: This is probably the least interesting of the add-ons. It changes the blakc and white icons on the toolbar with colored icons.
  2. SoftMaker Enhanced UI: Makes the Windows title bar and the menu bar visible, and moves the document tabs below the toolbar. Also, it adds new options to move emails and navigate email folders by adding new buttons and shortcuts to Thunderbird.
  3. Faster autocompletion of e-mail addresses: The fix improves auto-completion when large address books are used in Thunderbird. If you notice a delay of one or multiple seconds before recipient names are suggested to you after starting to type, you will benefit from this change.
  4. Software eM Client Importer: This add-on is only useful to users of Software Office and the eM Client it shipped with. It allows you to import email databases from those clients to Thunderbird.

You can download each of the add-ons for Thunderbird separately from the official SoftMaker website.

The approach leaves the core of Thunderbird untouched, and gives users options to install the add-ons they are interested in to improve the email client.

It offers benefits to the developer as well, as it is usually easier to make changes to an add-on than to Thunderbird's code directly.

Existing Thunderbird users may be interested in the add-ons that SoftMaker has created. It needs to be noted that the extensions are not offered on the official Mozilla Thunderbird add-ons repository.

They are provided as extension files that need to be installed manually in the client:

  1. Open the Thunderbird email client on your computer.
  2. Tap on the Alt-key if the menu bar is not displayed.
  3. Select Tools > Add-ons from the menu.
  4. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner next to search, and select install add-on from file from the menu that opens.
  5. Select the extension file that you have downloaded to install it.
  6. A restart is always necessary after the installation of extensions.
Summary
Thunderbird powered by SoftMaker
Article Name
Thunderbird powered by SoftMaker
Description
Thunderbird powered by SoftMaker is a custom version of the popular desktop email program that users can enhance with add-ons made specifically for it.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. JMGG said on January 19, 2012 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?

    1. BalaC said on January 19, 2012 at 9:42 am
      Reply

      I think its thunderbird

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
      Reply

      It is Mozilla Thunderbird.

  2. Salaam said on September 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
    Reply

    Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
    Reply

    If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.

    1. Lynda said on February 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
      Reply

      THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!

    2. Chad said on November 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
      Reply

      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
      Reply

      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
    Reply

    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.

  6. garth said on November 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)

  8. Simon said on March 24, 2015 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers

  9. Olu said on April 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm
    Reply

    Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
    Thank you

  10. Coenig said on July 23, 2015 at 7:36 am
    Reply

    Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)

  11. Fali said on January 20, 2016 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.

    1. MIki said on January 10, 2019 at 11:54 am
      Reply

      I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!

  12. Christina said on January 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm
    Reply

    Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007

  13. Oz said on July 22, 2016 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
    Reply

    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

  16. Jari said on October 31, 2016 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!

  17. Michel H said on November 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much. Solved!
    Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
    Thank you again. M

  18. Ziad Bitar said on January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am
    Reply

    This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.

    Thanks.

  19. Anonymous said on February 15, 2017 at 5:24 pm
    Reply

    Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.

  20. Rochelle said on March 6, 2017 at 11:59 am
    Reply

    Thank you, this worked !!!!

  21. anom1234 said on May 20, 2018 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!

  22. JC said on October 12, 2020 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!

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