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Add Email Accounts

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  • Last reply by Toad-Hall

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How to add email accounts to Thunderbird; do I need a Thunderbird email?

How to add email accounts to Thunderbird; do I need a Thunderbird email?

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You'll need to set up an account with an email provider of your choice (e.g. Gmail). Thunderbird is an email client you can use to access that account on your email provider's server. Neither Thunderbird nor Mozilla are email providers.

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No. There is no such thing as a 'Thunderbird email address'.

An email address would be given to you by your Internet Service Provider. You could have created a free one using eg: gmail or gmx. If you have a website being hosted by a company, then you would have created email addresses to use. It is also possible to pay for an email address with other companies that provide the service. In Thunderbird, you can get a new email address with a provider shown here: Menu app icon > New > Get a new mail account. Note, the company listed is nothing to do with Thunderbird and you would be charged for the email address as per their charges. So do be aware of the T&C's, costs etc of that company before electing that path.

Thunderbird is just an email client. A software program you have downloaded onto your computer. You can create mail accounts using an existing email address that you use. You can create more than one mail account so that you can have several email addresses with all emails coming in to Thunderbird and it means you do not have to logon to the individual webmail accounts to see emails for each email address. More info:

To create a mail account using an email address you already use: Menu app icon > New > Existing mail account. There is a wizard to help you complete the details. Thunderbird has a good database for recognising most of the more common servers and so can locate and complete most of the necessary configuration information. The server settings are dictated by the company providing the email address. eg: gmail has specific server settings. The password you enter is the same one you would use to access your webmail account. More info here:

Email accounts can be either POP or IMAP and this decision is made at the time of creating the mail account. More info:

After creating the mail account, please check all the other account settings are set up as desired. Right click on mail account name shown in Folder Pane and select Settings OR 'Menu app icon' > 'Account Settngs'. For example check Junk Settings:

Please note: some images still show version 68*. Menu app icon > Options > ' Privacy & Security' are now under one area in 78*, not separate. But the 'Junk' section settings are identical.