Mozilla Thunderbird is the preinstalled email client application on Ubuntu. Using this application, an Ubuntu user can read emails coming into his or her mail inbox. We will explain it in a step-by-step manner as usual based on our OS version 24.04 "Noble Numbat". Now let's learn and start the exercise!
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1. Configure Thunderbird
If you have a Gmail account (or any email service other than Google), you should configure it first so Thunderbird can read your emails from the mail server. Please follow Thunderbird IMAP Setup Tutorial to do that.
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2. Get started to Thunderbird user interface.
Here's how a Thunderbird window will look like on Ubuntu 24.04 "Noble Numbat."
It is divided into several parts:
top part aka "Header Bar" consists of a combination of (from right-to-left) three control buttons, three lines menu, a search bar, and a mode switcher button called "Mail". Note that this part is customizable on Thunderbird.
middle part consists of three columns, with the left column shows your accounts, middle column shows full list of your emails, and right column shows the content of a selected email. Note that this part is also customizable on Thunderbird.
bottom part consists of one horizontal panel called statusbar that will show a progress message following what Thunderbird is doing.
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3. Where is your mailbox?
An inbox (also called mailbox) is a place where all your emails are stored under your email account. Where is your mailbox on Thunderbird? It is located right under your email address on the left sidebar. See for example our private email address below.
Once your Inbox is selected, the middle column will show the content of your inbox, that is, a full list of your emails sorted in an oldest-to-newest order by default. See picture below.
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3. Read an email.
Click a mail title on the inbox area. The mail content will show on the right column by default. This is the default way you read an email on Thunderbird and it is customizable. Picture below shows an email from our subscription to Kubuntu Focus newsletter--one of our favorite GNU/Linux computer brands nowadays--.
An email consists of several parts:
- subject: the title of the mail.
- sender: the address of the person who sent the mail. *
- recipient: the address of the person who receive the mail. *
- date: the time when the mail arrived in the mailbox.
- content: the full text content of the mail. Some mails also contains pictures. **
- attachment: one or more files sent along with the mail.
*) May be hidden automatically to protect the users' privacy.
**) May be hidden automatically to secure the users from malicious codes.
3.1 Read an email in a new tab.
Want to view an email in full-width? Double-click a mail title (a subject) and the mail will be viewed on a larger space and this will open a new tab beside the Inbox tab. To go back, click the Inbox tab again.
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4. Download an email attachment.
Many emails contain an attachment or two. What is it? It is a file that is attached to and send along with a mail. Mails which have attachments will show a paper clip symbol near its subject on Thunderbird (see below). Location of an attachment in a mail is at the bottom part of the content (see below).
(1) Which emails have an attachment?
See paper clip symbols on the most left column.
(2) Where is the attachment located on a mail?
See the bottom part of the mail content.
(3) How to download an attachment?
Click a file listed on the attachment panel -> Save dialog will show -> Save.
(4) How to open an attachment?
Click a file listed on the attachment panel -> Open.
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5. Sort emails.
Do you want to read emails easier and quicker? Sorting your mails can help you read them easier. We give you three examples below:
(1) Sort by date and the newest first.
Click the "Date" column header once or twice to sort your emails like this.
(2) Sort by subject and alphabetically.
Click the "Subject" column header to sort your emails from A to Z (and click it twice for a reverse order).
(3) Sort by attachment.
Click the "Paper Clip" column header to sort your emails by categorizing them between having and not having attachments.
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6. Search for an email in the inbox
Do you want to get an old mail in thousands of other mails? If you remember a key word of it, you can easily get it and read it again. To do so, first you should know there are two search boxes on Thunderbird:
(Green: top search box | Yellow: quick filter box)
- top search box (green): type in here to search within all accounts (if there is more than one) on Thunderbird.
- quick filter box (yellow): type in here to search only within one account. This will not search in the other mail account, if any.
If you want to search, you can do it like the following examples:
(1) Full search:
For example, we type the key board "computer" in the quick filter box and the following emails will show as the result. This is a full search, because all the four categories are enabled and it finds out whichever emails containing the word "computer" in the Sender, Recepients, Subject, and Body.
(2) Search by subject:
If we search for "computer" with only "Subject" category enabled, then only emails with the key word in the title will show like below:
(2) Search by sender:
If we want to find which emails whose the sender has the key word "computer", then we enable only "Sender" category and as a result, we found an email from an address containing "computer" in its name.
(3) Search by body:
If we want to find only the text content instead, we enable "Body" category and we found an example email containing the key word in one of its paragraph like example below.
Other ways of searching are still plenty you can do a little exercise to find anything you need.
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7. Save an email
Open an email -> locate the group of buttons of Reply, Forward, etc. -> click More -> Save As -> Save -> the email will be saved as a file with a .eml extension. You can also choose other format namely HTML and Plain Text. See picture below.
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8. Print an email or save it as PDF
Open an email -> click More -> Print -> select a printer from under "Destination: " (for example here our Canon PIXMA MP160) -> Print -> done. This will print out the email to physical papers. This requires a printer device to be connected and configured beforehand.
If you want to export it as PDF instead, do the same, but select Save to PDF under "Destination: " instead of a printer above, and Save. Done. You can read the exported PDF using Document Viewer.
That concludes this tutorial we humbly presented to you, dear readers of The Ubuntu Buzz. We hope this will help you a lot in practicing Ubuntu and Free Software in your computing life and others. We wish you success!
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See Also
1. How To Setup a Gmail (and Other Email) Accounts on Thunderbird
2. Complete Guide to Ubuntu Default Applications and Their Purposes
3. How To Read PDFs on Ubuntu using the built-in Document Viewer
4. Email Self-Defense from the Free Software Foundation
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Acknowledgements
- Thank you Mr. Rangga Ramadia--a knowledge seeker at our computer course in Indonesia--for being the inspiration for us to write this tutorial.
- Thank you our beloved sister Salsabila Dwi Armadani--a young knowledge seeker at ours too--for always diligently sending an email after exercising with GIMP and LibreOffice.
We wish you all the best. Barakallahu feekum.
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References
How To Configure Thunderbird for IMAP E-mail Accounts
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This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.