Making myself comfortable with Thunderbird:
- Calendar and Tasks
Install Lightning. In Ubuntu as easy as:
apt-get install lightning-extension - The addressbook
Evolution exports to vcf. Thunderbird import from ldif and csv and such.
Solution: Conversion tool (online and downloadable for offline use). - GPG support.
apt-get install enigmail - General settings
Different from Evolution, for Thunderbird you need to save your signatures in text files. Also different, for e-mail “aliases” you don’t make new accounts but you can add them to a mail account behind the “manage identities” button.
After adding all my IMAP boxes and tweaking some other settings I only use Thunderbird since one hour ago.
Already found my first annoyance: Adding attachments. With Evolution you can simply drag and drop files from nautilus, with thunderbird you have to use a file chooser. Not friendly with multiple files and takes more effort, you have navigate to the right directory and its harder to identify the file(s) in question. To drag and drop an attachment you have to drop them in the top bar of the compose window, it doesn’t work if you drop them in the message area.
Shared calendar: Next on my list is playing around with a shared calendar (caldav), but I guess that has nothing to do with going from Evolution to Thunderbird. Although I heard that with Evolution it quite sucks, since the clock applet needs access to your keyring all the time. The downside of Desktop integration I guess.
I also wonder if Thunderbird searches for new messages in subfolders of my IMAP account. I’ll find out soon enough.
No related posts.
Just a tip – you *can* drag and drop files as attachments (at least I can on my Intrepid install). You just have to drag into the addresses pane, as opposed to the message body, which is a little wonky.
So, hopefully, that’s one annoyance down for you
Already found my first annoyance: Adding attachments.
just drag from nautilus and drop onto an open email message on the right of the addresses (a box will appear)
Thunderbird supports drap and drop of attachments in the mail compose window, just drop them with the mouse in the upper part of the window where addresses are listed and the file will be attached to the email.
That\’s odd. Whenever I drag an attachment (or multiple attachments) to a new message window it gets attached. Try dragging to the area where you enter recipients addresses. A new attachment section will be opened on the right where the filename(s) will be displayed.
I know what you mean. It’s still an annoyance, because it’s not obvious, but you can use nautilus D&D as well.
The only thing is, you have to drag the file(s) to the address part or the attachment part.
If you drop a file onto the email body, it has no results. I know, it’s stupid, and should be fixed, but in the mean time, if you know this, it’s only a minor issue
Hello Herman,
Drag’n'dropping attachments to a mail is possible in Thunderbird.
Fire up a “new message” window, then drag the file you want to attach somewhere _over the recipients_ in “new message” window. An “attachments” box will then appear at the right of the recipients.
Good point though; this box shouldn’t be hidden. IMHO, the usability / feature visibility loss is too high to compensate the small screen usage economy this “feature” offers. Seems like a necessary feature for some years ago small screen resolutions, but –except in the case of netbooks maybe– todays screen shouldn’t need this.
Checking if there is something about this in Moz’ Bugzilla.
I have to second that. even selecting multiple files and dragging them works
Gmail calendar support will only work if you use the Thunderbird binary from mozilla.org. Its installation is easy with Ubuntuzilla.
Same with the ligntning extension, the Ubuntu package is not recent enough.
Files can be attached by drag-adn-drop in the adresses region of the compose window (just above the body field).
And it’s OpenPGP support (the proposed standard) as opposed to GPG (the Linux binary for GnuPG).
For address book migration, the following is a bit more involved but is a 100% Ubuntu solution:
1) In Evolution, go to the “File” menu and choose “Save addressbook as Vcard”
Go to “File > Export > Export LDIF address book”, choose “All Contacts”, click OK and keep the default filename, addressbook.ldif
2) Remember the file name and location you choose. The default is “list.vcf”
3) Install KAddressBook: from a terminal window “sudo apt-get install kaddressbook” or go to the “Sysystem > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager” tool and install the kaddressbook package.
4) Launch KAdressbook. Go to “Applications > Accessories” and choose “Terminal”
5) Type “kadressbook”. You will get a few (normal) warnings
6) Go to “File > Import > Import vCard”, locate the “list.vcf” file created before
7) Verify the integrity of the data you just imported, make any necessary changes.
9) Launch Thunderbird and enter its AddressBook by clicking on the button
10) Under the “Tools” menu choose “Import”
11) Follow the import wizard prompts leading to choosing the previously created addressbook.ldif file
12) You will get notification the import has finished. Verify the data integrity and make any necessary changes.
13) Cleanup: remove the list.vcf and addressbook.ldif files from your home directory or from wherever you stored them during the process, remove the kaddressbook package
This also has the advantage of being something we can log bugs against
How to drag/drop attachments to thunderbird:
Aim for the top right region. It gets inserted to the right of the to, cc, and subject area.
It was a bugger to find at first I agree. But so was evolution after using the top right for so long via Thunderbird.
Check out \"QuoteCollapse\" extension and the \"Provider for Google Calendar\" if you use a Google Cal.
Best of luck.
> I also wonder if Thunderbird searches for new messages in subfolders of my IMAP account. I’ll find out soon enough.
Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Config Editor
set mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new true
<blockquote>Already found my first annoyance: Adding attachments. With Evolution you can simply drag and drop files from nautilus, with thunderbird you have to use a file chooser.</blockquote>
Just like sb said, DnDing attachments works just fine, you just need to hover the file over the compose window and it will automatically show the attachment box, you can drop the file there.
<blockquote>Shared calendar: Next on my list is playing around with a shared calendar (caldav)</blockquote>
What about importing a GCal calendar?
Just like sb said, DnDing attachments works just fine, you just need to hover the file over the compose window and it will automatically show the attachment box, you can drop the file there.
What about importing a GCal calendar?
I don\’t know if you got the same problem as me, but I can send attachments with Evolution and GMail IMAP, but I can\’t with Thunderbird (even if I copy the configuration).
And the other problem I have with Thunderbird (naw, is with Lighting) is I can\’t sync it with any application in a PDA, for example.
Just my experience.
Regards.
Alberto.
Check out the addon ‘Virtual Identity’ for managing your email aliases. There are also some identity reminder addons that may help you as well.
Thanks Fabian, I have bookmarked to try when I am ready for Thunderbird. I have used Evolution with alltray on startup which flawlessly, so I am trying Gmail with checkgmail on startup with prism and a sound file on new mail, again works well, and doesn’t get in the way. I’ll see how that suits me. I like gmail conversation threads, particularly for Launchpad emails. I have 30 emails in one line, with Evolution it takes up 30 lines.
I use thunderbird with gmail IMAP. A preference related to the IMAP account is \"subscribed folders\", these are the folders which are actually presented to be clicked on (at which time their contents is updated). Further, each folder has a preference of whether to periodically check for new messages in it. You get to the \"subscriptions\" preference by right-clicking on the imap account in the list in the root window of thunderbird; right click on a subfolder of it to get to the preferences for the subfolder including whether to watch it.
Thanks for the comments. Many of the same since I moderate a bit slow.
sorry for that.
Dragging and dropping works quite fine indeed if you drop it on the right spot. Thanks!
Imap checking: set mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new to true
Attachments, did you install thunderbird-gnome-support?
I read this post in Google Reader and came by to tell you that you could drag and drop attachments…. I see that I’m late to the party.
When I tried to use the on-line tool to import my address book all the birthdays where converted as personal field (therefore all the calendar of reminders for birthday need to be rebuild by hand) Any suggestions ?
Diego: I guess you have to hack the script a bit. Or do a trick with the output file but I guess the first option is more friendly.
I’m sorry for being rude, but
NO, why me ?
First: The people who wrote the script should be the one to test their software.
Second: You, that are testing the transition also should have reported that failure.
None you or the other guys reported that bug which lead me to question… do you really use your e-mail ?
I’m really sorry to rant on you with this, but I starting to have the same problem in a lot of GNU projects, when you start to really use them I’m crashing against two commonalities
1) Isn’t clear where the data are stored.
2) It is so complicated to switch from one project to other that you end up not doing it, and that, sound a lot like one of the characteristic of proprietary software.
I have been using Linux (and only Linux) during the last 10 years and something similar happens every time I change computers, it seems that most of the users and developers are not as puritans as me.
PS: why you need my e-mail ?