Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a pretty good e-mail client available in Linux, Windows and OsX. It is less vulnerable to viruses than Outlook and more stable than Evolution or Apple Mail.

• http://www.tufts.edu/tccs/s-thuman.html a good manual for thunderbird
• Important: Forcing Thunderbird to treat outgoing attachments properly
• Multiple SMTP servers
  • see in particular the Buttons! extension, to change server more directly
• Cannot Send Mail
• Sync On Arrival Plugin for Thuderbird for autosyncing mailboxes
• AddressBook Sync between Thunderbird and Squirrelmail
• how to change the order of accounts in Thunderbird:
  • Folderpane Tools extension
  • or delete all of them and make them in the right order :-)
  • or manually modify the preferences:
    1. quit Thunderbird
    2. open ~/.thunderbird/something/prefs.js
    3. look at the lines like
       user_pref("mail.server.server3.name", "CERN");
       to see which account number corresponds to what
    4. modify the line
       user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts","account1,account2,account3,account4");
       to read, for example
       user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts","account1,account3,account2,account4");
    5. the line
       user_pref("mail.accountmanager.defaultaccount", "account4");
       will anyway decide which account comes first
    6. the "Local Folders" account (which usually is account1) will anyway be first (if you choose it as defaultaccount) or last (no matter the order in accounts)
       - or at least, I haven't found a way to change that
    7. restart Thunderbird
    8. repeat until happy.
• Make a (almost) unified inbox:
  I was missing this feature in Thunderbird, respect to Apple Mail. It turns out that you can do something similar with a "search folder". Unfortunately there seems to be no way to search on folders from different accounts, so for the moment (TB v1.07) this is the best you can do.
  1. Put Local Folders first
  2. make a folder "Inboxes"
  3. Search for "Sender contains @", or something equally trivial, on anything you like
  4. click on "Save as Search Folder"
  5. in "Select the folders to search", select the Inboxe from one of the accounts that you have
  6. give it the same name as the account and save it in Local Folders/Inboxes
  7. repeat steps 4-6 for each account
• Install dictionaries:
  • get them here (en-GB, IT, add yours)
    or from the web site
  • quit Thuderbird
  • login as root (or su -)
  • start thunderbird as root and proceed as described in the web page
  • fix permissions on the files:
    chmod +r /usr/lib/thunderbird-1.0.7/components/myspell/*
  • log out from root and restart thunderbird
  • enjoy the spell checker.