This is very much a work in progress. ~Toby ---

If you have more than one e-mail address, or you subscribe to several newsgroups, you can use Mozilla Thunderbird to collect messages from all of them by creating multiple accounts. Each account can have its own server settings, inbox and other folders, or if you prefer, you can download all your e-mail into one Global Inbox. When you check for new messages, Thunderbird can check each account individually, or all of them simultaneously.

You can also set account options individually. For instance, you can tell Thunderbird to delete old messages from your personal e-mail account, but not from your work account. Or you can specify that you want to save a copy of your sent e-mail messages, but not your sent newsgroup messages.

Adding a new account

Before you can use Thunderbird to view and reply to messages for a particular account, you need to add the account to Thunderbird and provide key information about it.

To add a new account for e-mail, news, or RSS feeds:

1. Choose Tools > Account Settings….
2. In the Account Settings dialog box, click Add Account….

This displays the Account Wizard, which guides you through the process of setting up a new account.

Information you will need

To enable Thunderbird to send and receive messages, the Account Wizard will ask for technical information about the account you’re setting up. If you’re unsure about any of this information, your e-mail provider or newsgroup should be able to supply it.

For an e-mail account, you will need to tell the Account Wizard:

• your e-mail address;
• your username and password for that account;
• whether your incoming server is a POP or IMAP server (ask your provider);
• the name of your incoming server (for example, pop.example.com or imap.example.com);
• the name of your outgoing server (for example, smtp.example.com), if you haven’t already set one up.

For a newsgroup, you will need to tell the Account Wizard:

• your e-mail address;
• the name of the newsgroup server (for example, news.example.net).

RSS feeds

You can create a new RSS feed account using the Account Wizard, in exactly the same way as you create an e-mail or newsgroup account. Once created, you can use a single RSS feed account to subscribe to as many RSS feeds as you like.

If you want to subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds, you can create multiple accounts with different names and use each one to subscribe to a different subset of feeds. For example, you may want to create one account called ‘News’ and another called ‘Blogs’. As with e-mail and newsgroup accounts, each RSS feed account can have its own folder and you can set options for each one individually.

Removing an account

To remove an account:

1. Choose Tools > Account Settings….
2. On the left-hand side of the Account Settings dialog box, click the name of the account you want to remove, then click the Remove Account button on the bottom left part of the window.

Editing settings for an account

You can adjust many settings for each account independently of the others. For instance, you can change the server information for an account, or change how Thunderbird handles its messages.

To edit settings for an account:

1. Choose Tools > Account Settings….
2. On the left-hand side of the Account Settings dialog box, click the name of the account whose settings you want to edit. For more options, click one of the sub-items under the account name (for instance, Server Settings).
3. In the main area of the dialog box, change any settings you wish (more details below).
4. When you have finished making changes, click OK, or click Cancel to disregard your changes and close the dialog box.

Account Settings

When you click the name of an account in the Account Settings dialog box, Thunderbird displays the main Account Settings pane. This pane allows you to customize the name of the account and the details that other people see when they read a message sent from that account.

The options are:

• Account Name: By default, this is the name you gave to this account when you first added it. You can change this if you like.

• Your Name: This is what other people see when they view your messages. Most e-mail and newsgroup programs display this name as the 'Sender' of the message.

• Email Address: This is the address from which your messages appear to be sent. It is also the address to which other people's replies will be addressed, unless you specify a different Reply-to Address in the box below.

• Reply-to Address: If you would like other people's replies to be sent to an address other than your regular e-mail address, type in this box. Otherwise, leave this box blank.

• [more to add]