This article is for Macintosh users who are switching their email from Eudora to Thunderbird 1.0.2. Other articles in this series cover switching to OS X Mail and various Windows email options.
How to install Thunderbird
To download Thunderbird, go to:
http://www.mozilla.org/download.html
This web page lists a variety of Mozilla downloads. For Thunderbird you can choose to download the application for Windows, Linux, or Macintosh. Choose Macintosh. Your computer will download a disk image document named "Thunderbird 1.0.2.dmg." Take a look at your desktop and see if there's a disk image (looks like an external disk icon) named "Thunderbird." If you don't see one, find the downloaded dmg document and double-click it to generate the disk image. Open a directory window for the disk image (this may open automatically when the disk image mounts) and you will find a single item, the Thunderbird application. Now go to your desktop's Go menu and open the Applications folder. Drag the Thunderbird icon into your Applications. NOTE: Make sure to drag the icon to your Applications folder before you start Thunderbird; otherwise you'll only be able to run Thunderbird when the disk image is mounted (not a good thing).
You no longer need to have the Thunderbird disk image mounted, so drag its icon to the trash/eject icon on the OS X dock to remove it from your desktop. (If you ever need to use that disk image again, just find the document "Thunderbird 1.0.2.dmg" on your computer and double-click it. The disk image will appear again on your desktop.)
The time has come to double-click the Thunderbird icon in your Applications folder and launch the program. Thunderbird will first ask you whether you want to import your email settings from Netscape. You're probably migrating from Eudora, so say No and click the Next button. Then you'll see the New Account Setup window where you'll select Email Account and click the Next button. Thunderbird will ask you for a series of settings (email account name and password, POP and SMTP server names, etc.) -- just open your old Eudora, look at your settings there, and use those same settings for Mail. (While you've got Eudora open, go to the Checking Mail section of Settings and uncheck all of the boxes under "Connection." That will keep Eudora from automatically retrieving any more of your email from the server, should you happen to open the program again.) If you have a ucdavis.edu email account, a particularly important Thunderbird setting is SSL (Secure Socket Layer) in the Tools menu, under Account Settings and then Server Settings. Check "Use secure connection (SSL)." There's also an SSL setting under Outgoing server (SMTP), but you do NOT want to select SSL there.
To import your old mailboxes, address books, and settings, go to the Tools menu and select Import. You have three import items to choose from: mail, address books, and settings. Select the top item, Address Books, and click the Next button. Now select Eudora and click Next again. In the browse window, navigate to your Desktop, then your Hard Drive, then the Users folder, then the folder that bears your own username, and then the Documents folder. In the Documents folder, select Eudora Folder and click the Choose button to import your addresses and nicknames. When that task is done, go through the same process again, but this time select the second item, Mail, instead of Address Books. You've already done your settings, so you need not import them now.
Thunderbird preserves the sent date or received date for every email, but it does mark the emails as "unread." If you like, you can change them to "read" status like so: (1) open an imported mail folder, (2) use Command-A to select all emails in the folder, (3) Control-click on one of the selected emails, and (4) in the resulting pop-up menu select Mark --> As Read. Unfortunately, you'll have to do this for every imported folder. If you have a great many imported folders, you may do just as well to leave them all marked as "unread."
Managing directories
Thunderbird shows its mailboxes and folders on a window to the left, similar to the way Eudora shows them. If you install and run Thunderbird without importing from another email program, there will be one set of folders to the left that includes mailboxes for the inbox, sent, junk, etc. If you import from another program, you will notice another set of folders below the first. This new set will have its own inbox, trash, etc., and will contain your email from the program you have imported from. Those are the mailboxes you will go to when you need to look at old mail from Eudora. All of the new mail you receive and send after installing Thunderbird will appear in the first set of directories and not in the ones you have imported.
Junk mail in Thunderbird
Thunderbird uses something called "Bayesian filtering," which means that you need to teach the mail client what is spam and what isn't. You can either highlight a mail message and press the Junk button or you can right click on an email and mark it as "Junk" or "Not junk." By checking and unchecking mail, you're teaching Thunderbird which emails are spam. After a few weeks the client should be able to remove 99%+ of the spam that comes into your inbox. It is very important to train the spam filter in this way in the early weeks of using the program. It is also necessary to visit the Junk folder and check to make sure no legitimate messages were mistakenly sent there. If there is a message in the junk folder that isn't junk, you need to highlight the message and click the "Not junk" button.
UCD Campus Spam Filtering
UCD has a program called Spam Assassin that tests all of the email going to ucdavis.edu email addresses to identify and tag suspected spam, but it doesn't do anything with the suspected spam until you tell it what to do. You have three choices: (1) do nothing and you'll just keep getting the spam; (2) have it deleted at the campus mail server and you won't get it at all; or (3) have it stopped at the campus server and stored. In this case you will receive an email once a week that summarizes all of the spam in case there is something legitimate that you want to retrieve.
You can make your choice by going to
http://security.ucdavis.edu/spam.cfm
Toward the top of the page in the middle under Campus Spam Filtering, click on "Set up campus spam filtering now." You'll have to put in your username and password. Scroll down to the bottom of the page that opens up.
The default choice is the first one listed on the webpage. All the spam will be sent to your email account and you will have to rely on your email program's spam filters to catch it.
The second option is to receive an email once a week summarizing your spam. Then you can glance through the list and retrieve the items that you want. If you choose this second option one thing you have to remember to do is go into Geckomail periodically and delete the messages in the UCD-spam folder. If you don't, your email account will fill up and people won't be able to send you anything anymore.
The third choice listed is to have the spam deleted and never even delivered to your email account. You also have to check the box that says you understand that you may lose desirable mail. Once it has been deleted, you can't get it back.
Even if you activate the campus spam filters, you will still receive some spam -- it won't catch everything. In fact, the campus spam filters are very conservative because they don't want to stop legitimate email. So if you activate the campus spam filters, make sure that you also make use of the spam filters that come with your email program.
To access geckomail go to
Any questions?
One important resource for Thunderbird users is
http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird
This includes an FAQ and a good Knowledge Base as well as links to tips and advice.
If you're still stumped, feel free to call Jim, Damon, Claudia, or Blaine with any questions or difficulties and we'll do our best to help.
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Jim Coats
ANR Communication Services
Phone: (530) 297-4445
Fax: (530) 297-4438
Damon DiPietro
ANR Communication Services
Phone: (530) 297-4433
Fax: (530) 757-5731
Claudia Myers
ANR Communication Services
Phone: (530) 297-4444
Fax: (530) 297-4438
Blaine Sullivan
ANR Communication Services
Phone: (530) 297-4440
Fax: (530) 297-4438