Setting up Mozilla Thunderbird as IMAP client - page 1
Mozilla Thunderbird is an excellent email program for both Mac OSX and Windows systems. It's an open source project from the same people who brought us Firefox web browser. It's free and it's already by default installed on computers in Skirball Institute. On this page we'll show you how to configure Thunderbird as IMAP client. We will not be setting up POP as IMAP is our preferred method for several reasons. Read more about POP vs IMAP here. The instructions below were written using Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 for OSX but the procedure it's pretty much the same for older versions as well as Windows versions. If you don't have Thunderbird installed yet, download it from Mozilla's website and install with the default options.
First, locate the program icon. It should be already in your dock, if not find it in the Applications folder, as shown on the images to your right.
Most likely you're opening Thunderbird for the first time so you will see a window like this one. You may see other options available, such as Import from Entourage or Import from Eudora but do not select those. We will be setting up IMAP account from scratch. Click Continue...
In this window select Email account as the type of account you will be setting up. As you can see Thunderbird supports .Mac a Gmail as well as newsgroups and RSS. Click Continue...
Enter your name in the Your Name field as you want it to appear to recipients as the FROM name, enter you complete email address in the Email Address field. Click Continue...
Select the type of the server as IMAP. In both Incoming Server and Outgoing Server fields enter saturn.med.nyu.edu. Now, here is a catch - this works if you're in Skirball. If you're outside of Skirball you will need to enter some other outgoing (SMTP) server that is local to that particular location. For example, if you're outside of Skirball but still within the Medical Center you will use smtp.med.nyu.edu as your outgoing mail server. If you're setting this up for home use you will need to find out what your ISP's outgoing server is. Each ISP, be it Roadrunner, Cablevision, Verizon, Earthlink, etc. have their own separate outgoing (SMTP) servers. Otherwise you will be able to receive email but not send. As an option you can always use IMP - the webmail. It will remain in sync with Thunderbird, meaning any email you sent from IMP will also be seen by Thunderbird - if you follow these instructions precisely. Click Continue...
Enter your username which is the part before the @ sign, do not enter you entire email address here. Click Continue...
Give the account a name, this is just a descriptive name, you can call it anything you'd like.Click Continue...
This is the end of the Account Wizard and the initial setup. Click Done but... we're not done yet...
Thunderbird will ask you for your saturn password. Type it in. If you're in Skirball it'll work, if you're outside of Skirball it'll fail because there is one security setting that needs to be enabled.
If your password is accepted your mail list will look something like this - not really complete, there are some more settings to be configured. If your password failed go to the next step...
Go to the Tools menu and select Account Settings...
Under account settings click on the line that says Server Settings and ...
...and check the SSL option. If your password failed before click OK now to close this window. And quit Thunderbird. When you re launch Thunderbird it'll ask you for your password and this time it will work. Then come back to this step. Otherwise continue on...
Click the Advanced button... While here you can change the frequency of email checking, we'll get back to this later...
Under Advanced settings enter ~/mail in the IMAP server directory field. Leave other settings as they are and click OK...
While still in the settings window select Composition & Address... and change the default setting for original message quoting as shown on the image to your right. We find that the default setting causes some confusion among users. Click OK and go to the next page.
