Setting up Your Email Account in Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is an easy to use email client. Setting up your email account in Thunderbird takes only a few moments, and can be accomplished in a simple number of steps.
When you first start up Thunderbird, it will ask you to immediately setup a new account. A screen with three option will pop up (Email, RSS, or Newsgroup). For the basic setup of an Email account, we're going to choose "Email".
After this, and every step, you will need to hit the "Next" button to continue onto the next step.
You will now see two blanks. One will be "Your Name", into which you simply type your full name. the second will be your email address that Thunderbird will be checking (such as user@email.com). Fill in these two blanks, and then click "Next".
Now you will see a window with a couple of things to verify and type in. First, you will want to select what kind of email account you are using (whoever set up the account for you can tell you, although POP is a safe answer to try).
Then, you will need to type in your incoming mail server (the blank is titled "Incoming Server"). Again, you will need to know the specific answer to put in here, although most places use a "mail.domainname.com" setup. If you aren't certain, just ask the people that setup the account for you, and they'll let you know what the incoming server is).
Thunderbird will also ask you for your "Outgoing Mail Server". More than likely this is the same as your "Incoming" server, and you can simply use the same answer.
Finally, there is an option for the "Global Inbox". If you will be running multiple email accounts and want those accounts to each deliver into their own folders (for extra organization), as opposed to all the email delivering into one solitary Inbox, un-check the box. Otherwise, leave it checked and click "Next".
The next screen will ask for your Incoming User Name. In almost every case, this will be your user name on your email account (such as with "mike@email.com", mike is the user name). The blank will likely already bill filled in (Thunderbird is smart and automates this step). Unless your Incoming User Name is different from your email account, click "Next".
Thunderbird will then ask your for your "Account Name". This is simply for your own organization. Whatever you would like to name this is up to you. Fill in the blank, and click "Next".
Finally, simply verify all the information and that it is correct, and click "Finish".
You have no sucessfully completed your email setup and should be able to send and recieve email out of your account. Congratulations!
Further down the road, if you want to add additional accounts to the program (Thunderbird can handle multiple email accounts, RSS feeds, etc.) go to the top menu (commonly called the "File Menu" since the first option on that menu is "File") and highlight "Tools". This will drop down a menu with further options. Select "Account Settings".
A window will pop open, and it will have a series of options. Simply click the button at the bottom marked "Add Account".
That, in turn, will open up its own window providing you with the option to add an email, RSS or newsgroup account. Simply folow the steps above to add additional emails accounts at any time.
As a note, when running more than one email account out of Thunderbird, Thunderbird will use just one Outgoing Server for all sent email. You can change what server it's using in the "Account Settings" window.