What is Thunderbird?

Thunderbird is the standard email client bundled with Ubuntu. It is the Linux equivalent of Outlook: it retrieves your emails from your organisation's mail server, lets you read, reply, and file them, and makes it easy to find any message with search. It is developed and maintained by the Mozilla Foundation — the same organisation behind Firefox — and is used by millions of public sector workers across Europe.

One meaningful difference from webmail (Outlook in a browser, for instance): Thunderbird runs directly on your computer. You can browse your emails even without an internet connection, because it keeps local copies. As soon as the connection returns, it synchronises automatically.

The three-pane layout

When Thunderbird opens, the layout is immediately familiar: three panes side by side, just like Outlook.

• Left pane — folders. Your Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash, and any folders you have created all live here. Click a folder to display its contents.
• Centre pane — message list. Messages in the selected folder appear here, newest first. One click on a message shows it in the right pane; a double-click opens it in its own window.
• Right pane — reading pane. The body of the selected message appears here, with attachments listed at the bottom. Reply and forward buttons sit in the toolbar above.

Setting up your professional email account

When you launch Thunderbird for the first time, it opens the account creation wizard automatically. If you close it by mistake, find it again under Edit → Account Settings → Account Actions → Add Mail Account.

The wizard asks for three things:

• 1Your name as it will appear to recipients (e.g. Marie Dupont, Ministry of the Interior)
• 2Your work email address (e.g. m.dupont@interieur.gouv.fr)
• 3Your usual password

Thunderbird then tries to detect your server settings automatically. In the majority of French public-sector organisations it succeeds on its own. If it cannot, your IT department will give you the settings to enter manually: incoming server address (IMAP), port, security (SSL/TLS), outgoing server address (SMTP).

Reading, composing, replying, forwarding

The day-to-day actions work exactly as they did in Outlook.

• New message. Click the Write button in the toolbar (or Ctrl + N). A compose window opens. Type the recipient's address in the To: field, add a subject, and write your message.
• Reply. With a message open in the reading pane, click Reply to reply to the sender alone, or Reply All to include everyone on the original message.
• Forward. Click Forward: the original message appears in the compose window and you can send it to a new recipient, with or without added comments.
• Attach a file. In the compose window, click Attach (or the paperclip icon) and select your file from the file chooser. You can attach several files at once.
• Save an attachment. In the reading pane, attachments are listed at the bottom of the message. Right-click an attachment and choose Save As… to save it to a folder of your choice.

Folders, search, junk, and stars

Creating a folder. Right-click your account in the left pane and choose New Folder. Give it a name and it appears immediately. To move a message into a folder, drag it from the message list, or right-click the message and choose Move To.

Searching. The search bar sits at the top right of the window. Type a word and Thunderbird instantly filters the messages in the active folder. For a search across your entire mailbox, use Edit → Find → Search Messages (or Ctrl + Shift + F) and refine by sender, date, or subject.

Marking a message as junk. Select the message and click Junk in the toolbar (or the flame icon). Thunderbird gradually learns to recognise spam and can move it automatically to a Junk folder.

Stars. Click the star to the right of a message in the list to flag it as important — the equivalent of an Outlook flag. Filter your starred messages via View → Messages → Starred Messages.

Address Book and Calendar

Address Book. Open it via Tools → Address Book (or Ctrl + Shift + B). You will find your personal contacts and, if your IT administrator has set it up, your organisation's directory. To add a contact, click New Contact and fill in the fields. When composing a message, Thunderbird auto-completes addresses from your address book.

Calendar (Thunderbird Calendar). The calendar is built directly into Thunderbird. Click the Calendar icon in the left sidebar (or Events and Tasks → Calendar). You can create events, set reminders, and if your organisation uses a shared calendar (CalDAV), your IT team will give you the URL to connect via New Calendar → On the Network.

Signatures

A signature is inserted automatically at the end of every message you write. To set one up, go to Edit → Account Settings, select your account in the left-hand list, and scroll to the Signature text section. Tick Automatically add this signature, then type your signature in the text box. You can include your name, job title, phone number, and department — in plain text or in HTML if you want formatting.

Importing from Outlook

If you have an export of your old Outlook mailbox (a .pst or .eml file), Thunderbird can import it. Use Tools → Import and select the format of your file. Imported messages appear in a local folder in Thunderbird and remain available even offline.

In practice, for staff moving from a Windows computer to a Linux one, the simplest approach is usually to import nothing at all: in IMAP mode, all your messages are already on the server. As soon as Thunderbird is configured, your entire mailbox appears — no extra steps needed.