Thunderbird is one of the most popular email clients probably because it is free and runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows. It is used by all kinds of users, from basic home users to advanced IT professionals. But as with any software application, many people have certain misconceptions about Thunderbird and what it can do and cannot.
Let’s take a look at few of them:
Thunderbird is an Email Client nor an Email Provider!
This fault in understanding Thunderbird as an email client may not apply to all, but it is still frequently misunderstood by many.
Thunderbird is an email client from Mozilla foundation, the same company that offers Firefox and Sea Monkey. It is not an email provider, however. You need to have an email account and your personalized email address on the servers to use that with Thunderbird.
This myth is probably circulated among users that aren’t too computer savvy by add-ons like “Get an Account” that lets you create a new email account right from its interface. This can be mistaken by many as something that is the fundamental feature of Thunderbird (which it is not). It simply connects with your actual mail account and servers and gives you a lot of functionality to manage your emails better than the web-mail.
Thunderbird Doesn’t Support Add-ons That aren’t Formally Supported by the Version you are Using
Many users think that an add-on won’t work in Thunderbird if it is not formally supported by the version of Thunderbird that you are using.
That’s not true. Mozilla Thunderbird allows you to use any add-on you want.
However, for added security and to avoid performance issues, Thunderbird runs a compatibility check on add-ons that you are trying to install. You just need to skip the compatibility test. You can also an add-on called “Disable Add-on Compatibility Checks,” which does exactly what the name suggests.
Disabling Global Search Won’t Allow to Search Emails
If you don’t know what Global search or ‘Gloda’ is, click here to read the article to know about it. Thunderbird index all emails under a single global file to make searching emails faster and more effective. However, if you disable this feature, you can still search your emails through other various ways.
Profiles in Thunderbird
Thunderbird doesn’t look for the profile in default location to load data. It reads the profile.ini file and whatever location is specified in that file, Thunderbird will load Profile from there. You can specify any location, and thus, Thunderbird can actually load Profile from anywhere.
You cannot Import Data to Thunderbird if It is not Available in Tools –> Import option
If you’ll go to the Tools –> Import, you can see the in-built import tool of Thunderbird that allows you to import data from other email clients. However, the necessary part is that those clients should be installed in the same machine. This led many users to believe that they cannot import data from clients that are not listed there.
This is not true. In fact, you can even import data from Windows Outlook to Thunderbird installed in Mac. There are tools like “Mail Extractor Max“, “PST Extractor Pro“, “OST Extractor Pro“, “OLM Extractor Pro” and “Mail Extractor Pro” from USL Software, and other third-party add-ons to help you migrate data from anywhere to Thunderbird.