My Thunderbird Part 4

Contact Sidebar Extension

I like to have my contacts list close at hand and Contacts Sidebar gives me that option. Rather than waste all that space under the local folders, we can use it to display our address books.

This is how Contacts Sidebar looks once it is installed.

Now, without opening the a separate window, you have the ability to:

Switch between address books
Search through address books

Just double-click on any name and a New Message window will appear with that contacts e-mail address in the "To:" field.

For more information and keyboard shortcuts, visit the Contacts Sidebar Web Page

Download the latest version of Contacts Sidebar

My Thunderbird Part 3

Downloading and Installing Extensions in Thunderbird

Downloading and installing extensions in Thunderbird is not as simple as in Firefox.

Once you find an extension that you want, download the file to your hard drive. If you just click on the "Install Now" button on the pages in the Mozilla Add-on/Extension Database, the following window will pop-up and will attempt to install this extension into Firefox. The extension is obviously not for Firefox, so we want to avoid this.Right click on the button and select "Save Link As". Save the file to your hard drive in an easy to find place.
In Thunderbird, select Tools...Add-OnsFrom the Extensions pop-up window, click "Install..." in the lower left-hand corner.
Find the file that you saved to the hard drive earlier and select "Open". A "Software Installation" window will pop-up and after a 5 second countdown...

...you can click the "Install Now" button to add the file.


Click on the "Restart Thunderbird" and when the program is running again, so should your newly installed extension.

My Thunderbird Part 2

Add Your E-mail Accts

The first thing you will do when you install Thunderbird, is add your e-mail accounts. Here are some screenshots of the process:

First, select File...New...Account

Select what type of account you are adding. I guess Gmail is not merely e-mail. Select the most appropriate option.

This is the information that will be visible to those that receive your e-mails.

Here is where you input your server information. If you are unsure about your info, check out this link.


This is what will show in your sidebar as the label for this account.

You are all done.

My Thunderbird Part 1

I love Thunderbird. I don't know if I like the actual program half as much as I enjoy the ability to make the e-mail client do whatever I want through extensions. I figured I would write a series of posts to expound on why I love Thunderbird and let you all know some of my favorite extensions and tips that make my life easier. Feel free to click on the images for higher resolution screen shots.

First, here is what my Thunderbird 2.0 looks like most of the time.


When I am sorting through my inbox, I like to hide the sidebar with "L" and it looks a little cleaner"And yes, I actually do keep my inbox clean despite receiving quite a bit of e-mail every day.

Here is a screen shot of the list of my extensions that I have installed at this point:


In the next post I will go over some of the extensions and their functions.