As an alternative to MS Outlook, I decided to use Mozilla Thunderbird with the Lightning Add-on extension to give me calendar features, too. I’ve been very impressed so far.

Local Folders (shared)

The first step was to setup sharing among all of my computers so that I could share a common set of items for email, calendar(s), and contacts (more on calenars and contacts later…). To do this, you need to setup a shared network location for Thunderbird’s Local Folders, and point each installation to use it. Because my Thunderbird Local Folders are stored on my server, they get backed up. And since Thunderbird uses common standards for the email format, restoring is as easy as copying the folder(s) back to the original location (see below for more details).

In my case the location of the Local Folders is \\server\shared\Gray\MozillaProfile\zwy6hhfo.default\Mail\Local Folders. All computers with Thunderbird installed use this as their Local Folders location. This is refernced in the Profile.ini file on the local computer, as well as in the Local Folder Properties within Thunderbird.

The first thing to do is to discover where your current Thunderbird Profiles.ini file is being stored. Here are the (default) store locations:

Windows XP/2000: C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Thunderbird\
Windows Vista: C:\Users\[User Name]\App Data\Roaming\Thunderbird\

In this file, you’ll need to change it to look as follows:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=\\server\Gray\MozillaProfile\zwy6hhfo.default

Next, you need to reboot your computer (possibly not necessary, but a good idea). Start up Thunderbird! If everything has gone right, you should have all your folders, emails, filters, plugins, and other goodies. And when you switch between, they will automatically be updated.

[Note: Make sure that all of the same Extensions and Add-ons are installed on all computers. Also, You cannot be running Thunderbird while performing these operations.

Syncing Thunderbird Contacts with Google Contacts

Sharing the contacts can be tricky. There are 2 good Add-on’s called Zindus and Google Contacts to help sync TBird’s contacts with Google’s. They both have their shortcomings. Zindus doesn’t sync postal addresses (it may in a future release), and Google Contacts gave me mixed success with syncs. So for now, I’m content to share common contacts among my TBird computers, and I simply imported these contacts into Google.

Syncing Thunderbird Calendars with Google Calendars

(From http://bfish.xaedalus.net/?p=239)

Provider (Add-on) allows bidirectional syncing between the Lightning Calendaring Extension in Thunderbird and Google’s Calendar Service. This is possible because Google, being the lovely chaps that they are, decided to opt for the iCalendar standard in GCal, well done chaps.

Installation of Provider is pretty similar to that of Lightning. Go to the Add-ons Window (Tools -> Add-Ons) and Install the .XPI file available for download from Provider’s Page in the Mozilla Add-on repository.

Now, the last piece of the pie is to tie our Google Calendar into our Lightning Calendar. First of all, you will need to log into your Google Calendar account. Once you are at the main page, click on Settings from the Top Right Menu.

Once on the Settings page, you need to drill down into the Calendars settings screen and then click on your Calendar from the list (I only had a single calendar.)

Now you need to copy the URL of your Private Address XML Feed onto the clipboard.

You’re done in Google Calendar for now, and we can head back to Thunderbird to finally wrap this tutorial up. Once you are back in Thunderbird, you need to create a new calendar in Lightning. You can do this by clicking on the following Menu item:

File -> New -> Calendar…

Upon clicking the New Calendar menu item, another window will appear. The first option is the location of your Calendar – select On the Network and click Next.

The next option allows you to specify the Format of the Calendar, select the Google Calendar radio button (if you don’t have a Google Calendar radio button, make sure your Provider Extension is installed correctly). In the location input box, paste in your Google Calendar Private Address XML Feed that we extracted above, and click Next.

The next window asks you to give your new Calendar a Name and a Colour, I will leave these entirely up to you.

Finally (yes, at last) you will have a Google Calendar Login window which will ask for your Google Account login. If you only have a single Google Calendar, Provider will have automagically extracted your username from the XML feed you just specified; however, just double check that it’s correct, then enter your Google account password.

Well done, you can now enjoy the many benefits of being able to view and update your Google Calendar directly from Thunderbird.

Restoring messages

Thunderbird email messages are stored in the Local Folders folder. There is a folder such as Test.sbd and 2 other files, such as Test (no file extension), and Test.msf. To restore messages, simply copy these 2 items back into the Local Folders folder and restart Thunderbird.

For more info about restoring (or even exporting messages to another computer, see this:

How to Export Thunderbird Emails to a Different Computer

Solution: Thunderbird’s mail files are in the standard plain text “mbox” format, which almost all mail programs can use or import. Many proprietary mail programs have a function to import from Eudora, which also uses the “mbox” format; this function should read your Mozilla mail files properly.

Your mail files are inside your profile (see the Profile Folder), in the Mail and (if you use IMAP) ImapMail folders. Each mail folder (Inbox, Sent, etc.) is stored as two files — one with no extension (e.g. INBOX), which is the mail file itself (in “mbox” format), and one with an .msf extension (e.g. INBOX.msf), which is the index (Mail Summary File) to the mail file. Tell the other program to import mail from the file with no extension.

If you want to transfer a mail file to another Mozilla profile or another installation of Mozilla, simply put the mail file into the other installation’s Mail folder.

Archiving messages

To archive messages, the easiest way I know of is to create a new sub-folder, such as Test archive in Thunderbird, and make it a subfolder of your Local Folders folder. Then, you can move all older messages into this folder. Once this is done, you can move the Test archive.sbd folder, Test archive file (no file extension), and Test archive.msf file into a different location outside of the Local Folder structure, such as Archived Mail. If you want to access them later, you simply move them back into your Local Folders folder. There is another add-on called “Buttons” which helps to archive messages to Local Folder subfolders, which could possibly make this even easier.

Why can’t I create Tasks?

You can’t create tasks for Google Calendar, but you can create a new TBird local calendar, on which you can create tasks.