Open your Thunderbird email client and select Tools -> Account Settings. Your screen should look similar to the one on the left. Scroll all the way down on the left hand side of the window until you see Outgoing Server (circled in red) and click on it. In the space on the right you will see any SMTP accounts you have set up previously.

As I stated in my previous post, Thunderbird can handle many different accounts as long as they support POP3 or IMAP email protocols. I myself have 4 of my email accounts set up to be read through Thunderbird so all I do is start it up and 4 separate email accounts are checked at once.

After you’ve gotten to this scree you are going to click Add and another window will pop up with text areas for you to fill out with your email servers information. I posted a few links for certain email clients in my previous post so if you can’t find it, just go back to my previous post and look up the information. I listed the 3 main email services that allow POP3 and IMAP email reading, but there are some email services that do not support it yet.

Once you click Add you will be presented with the following screen. The Description field is there for you to give the account a name, so if you’re setting up your AOL account, you might want to put AOL email in that box. You can put any description that you want to associate with this specific SMTP server.

The server name is where you are going to put the SMTP server name, which for most email severs is smtp.domainname.com. For example, AOL’s SMTP is smtp.aol.com.

The port should be set to what your email server uses for outbound emails. This can be found on the email information pages that I linked to in my previous post.

Your username for most email servers is going to be your full email address, not just your username.

The secure connection is only used by some email services so you’ll want to check the help pages to see which one you want to use. AOL and Gmail use the TLS, if available option.

Once you’re done entering your information hit OK. The original Account Settings window will still be open, so click on any of the email accounts you have and on the right side you’ll see a selection box for Outbound servers. Click the dropdown box and select the correct one for each email.

And that’s it, you’ve set up the outbound SMTP server for your email.

• Thunderbird email account setup

First go to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=thunderbird-2.0.0.12&os=win?=en-US, and download the Thunderbird email client. (This link will automatically start your download when you visit it)

After installing Thunderbird, you are going to be presented with a dialog box that asks you for your email account information. The box will look similar to the one on the right. Here you can choose what kind of account you want Thunderbird to set up. As you can see, Thunderbird can be used for your email accounts, RSS feeds, and even newsgroups. For now, choose Email account (even if you’re setting up Gmail) and hit next.

The great thing about using Thunderbird is that it has the ability to have all of these accounts easily accessible in one place. This way your RSS feeds and emails can be read from the same window, instead of going to multiple sites and logging in to multiple accounts to read everything.

On the next screen (shown below) enter your name as you would want it to appear in your friend’s / coworker’s email inbox when they receive an email from you. Enter your email address in the box that says email address.

Next you want to select the email option that best fits what you want to do. POP3 email will download all messages from your email server onto your computer for you to read. IMAP will read the messages from the email server, but it won’t download them to your computer. All messages will remain on your email providers server. Check with your email service to see which one they offer. Gmail for example, offers both options, AOL, however, only provides the IMAP option.

If you choose IMAP the bottom half of the window will ask for your email service’s outbound address (usually smtp.emailservice.com) as you can see in the window above, my email service is through 1and1.com. The inbound / outbound server options can be seen on the screen on the right.

If you set up multiple email accounts Thunderbird will use the first outbound server you entered.

You can find the correct information for your email service at the following links:

Gmail forwarding help, AOL forwarding help, Yahoo forwarding help (Yahoo only allows POP3 access to yahoo mail plus subscribers)

The following link has information on other email services (this information may be out of date)

Email address information

Click next to go to the next screen after you’ve entered your information.

On the screen to the left you’re going to enter your user name for your email service. Most users will enter their full email address in this box. When you’ve entered your email address, click next.

If you’ve set up an email account already, your old outbound server will be used by default ss you can see on the bottom of the image. Another post will soon follow to show you how to set up multiple outbound servers.

The second to last screen (see below) will ask you to enter the name for the account. Try and name it something useful, such as Gmail work account, or AOL home email. Once you’re finished, hit next.

Once you’ve finished entering all of your information the last screen will show you all the details you entered to make sure they’re correct. Once you’ve verified that your information is correct, hit finish and you’re done.

Click on the inbox and Thunderbird will start connecting to your email server. Enter your password to connect and your email will show up in the main window. In the password window there will be a check box asking to save your password, and if you’ve got an up-to-date anti virus program, then you’ll be safe to save it (saving your password will store it in an encrypted file on your computer, this is generally safe but as with anything, it is vulnerable to hackers). If you don’t trust the password manager to store your password, then don’t check the box, and you’ll have to enter your password every time you connect to check your email.

Stay tuned for a follow-up article explaining how to add more outgoing smtp servers so you can add more email accounts, and have them play nice with each other.

• Read multiple emails with Thunderbird