Outlook 2000 to Thunderbird

I saw that message pop up a few times and I can't say for sure if I always found an email when I did see it. It's just a little scary hearing the wave play and not finding anything.

Everytime I hear it, I scan through all the folders listed even though I know some of them wouldn't have it. And I found that "Message Rules" thing and it is blank for all six addresses.

I did have one basic filter rule set up in Outlook and that was to redirect any message with [Spam} in the subject line to the deleted items folder. I let my AVG Pro do all the anti-spam examinations and put that in the subject line when it finds something. But much of my email is already scanned on my Internet server before it ever gets to my home computer. So it was rare for Outlook to even catch one.

I am beginning to suspect that maybe something other than an incoming email is triggering the new message wave sound.

With the address book thing, I'm still trying to figure out why I need two different folders, one called [Contacts] and another called [Personal address Book]. I wonder if I move all my contacts from the [Contacts] folder over to the address book, if that will help.

But I have all weekend to play with it now. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Outlook because it was so simple to use.

From everything I've read, Thunderbird is suppose to be a fantastic email client. But if you want to know how to screw it up and corrupt the hell out of it, I figured out how.

The first thing to do to really make a mess of things is to tell Thunderbird to go ahead and import everything from Outlook, especially if you have been using Outlook for over ten years and have large archives and lots of specialty folders. Thunderbird didn't merge these ito its own but just included them as additional folders and spends a long time loading all that crap when it starts up. When I did that, I figured that I would just sort it all out once it was in Thunderbird but what a mess. And when you have half a dozen accounts with different outgoing servers, well, that's just more fun you get to have.

So then I got this bright idea that since it was so new, I would just UNinstall Thunderbird and REinstall a fresh copy , only importing what I actually had to. Of course, that didn't work. Thunderbird found everything and included it again. I guess I should have spent some time stripping the regestry down after uninstallation to get rid of all traces. But again, I was impatient. So now, I have this long list of folders under [Local Folders] and I can't tell which ones Thunderbird wants and needs and which ones I can delete. I started deleting them at random to see what happens because I still have Outlook if I crash Thunderbird and I can always clean up and try again.

This may just turn out to be an interesting learning experience. I'm sure I'll figure out just what makes Thunderbird happy sooner or later. But as nice as everyone seems to think it is, I have to wonder if Outlook isn't the easiest client of all.

I think it was checking the "SSL" that did it. Everything seemed right and after I did that, it started giving me my Hotmail.

That looks like all I can expect unless there is another tweak for another problem. I have several email accounts, one from the cable company that provides my Internet connection and another that is my main private email supplied by the web-hosting company I use. I like that one because I have full control over the size and everything. But I use that for friends and family only. I have a Gmail email for my online business transactions and I use Hotmail specifically for my forums and everyplace that wants an email address because I have it set up to dump everything into the junk enless I have the particular sender in my Hotmail address book.

When I use Outlook, and I compose an email, if I just hit the [Send] button, it defaults to my main home private email and provides the recipient with that address as a return address. But Outlook has a tiny little down-arrow to the right of the [Send] button that lets me select any of my accounts to be the one that my mail is sent from. That way, the return address I provide is which ever account I want it to be. From what I can see so far, Thunderbird won't let me do that.

I'm not sure if I can have multiple outgoing server addresses and especially when Gmail and Hotmail require "SSL" and my home addresses require that I have that unchecked.

So it seems that nothing is going to be easy here.

and you are welcome.

This other problem you described. I faced a similar problem with prior versions of Thunderbird, but specifically because I have two email accounts; one, like you with my broadband ISP, and the other with an emergency dial-up ISP, (for when broadband goes down). Opening Thunderbird and it would download email for the account of the ISP I was connected to at the time, but also, I could ask TB to download the other accounts emails. Both ISPs had an agreement to download each others emails on demand.

But sending emails was different. I had to be logged in to, (connected to), the ISP I wanted to send emails for that account. That was because of the different SMTP servers they each had.

Your situation is different in that you don't need to connect to the internet with anything other than your cable company ISP, because your other email account providers are not ISPs. However, like you say, their outgoing SMTP servers are different, and that may be the problem.

But having said that, Thunderbird 3 appears to be different. TB3 uses Tabs which help you manage different email accounts, and according to Mozilla, you should be able to send emails from different accounts in TB3, eg;

"If you like Firefox?s tabbed browsing, you?re going to love tabbed email. Tabbed email lets you load emails in separate tabs so you can quickly jump between them. Perhaps you?re responding to an email and need to refer back to an earlier email. Tabbed email lets you keep multiple emails open for easy reference.

Double-clicking or hitting enter on a mail message will now open that message in a new tab window. Right-clicking on messages or folders will open them in a tab in the background.

When quitting Thunderbird, visible tabs will be saved and will be restored when you open Thunderbird the next time. There is also a new Tab menu on the Tab toolbar to help you switch between Tabs."

(Copied from http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/features/ ).

My underlining in the paragraph above to highlight what seems to be the ability to respond to emails from different accounts.

So, I think it is possible. As long as you have set up multiple Outgoing Server (SMTP), addresses in Tools > Account settings > Outgoing Server (SMTP), I don't see why this wouldn't work.

Mark

I'm going to have to make sure I have version 3 which I think I do and then I will have to study up on this tabbed email. It looks promising.

Good luck with your choice. We all work better with 'what works for us', as they say, so I hope it works well for you.

Mark

I've been using Outlook for ten years and have been very happy with it. But I am preparing to buy or build a new computer and that will mean moving up to Windows 7. The Outlook I have is from my Office 2000 and from what I've been able to determine, will not be compatable with Windows 7. So I will have to buy either a new version of Outlook or a new Office Suite. But I am too spoiled with the way Outlook works and I want to continue using it.