T-Bird 3.0 versus Outlook 2010 (beta)

At work, Microsoft Outlook 2003 is the de-facto standard for email management.

At home, I’ve been using Thunderbird for years.

Due to a recent hard-drive (volume) failure at home, on the primary system our “master” email got managed on, I had to rebuild our email stores.

It wasn’t really any problem just took some time to migrate from Thunderbird 2.0 to 3.0.

Then I had to redo some of my email account settings in TBird 3.0 as I wanted to be able to choose which email account I wanted to respond out of, not just the default one.  That took some work with Gmail's documentation and TBird 3.0.

So here is my problem.  I’ve installed and configured Outlook 2010 beta to access my personal web-mail account and really, really like the familiarity and layout in 2010.  Really.  But I also like the dependability and ease of export/import options that Thunderbird offers me.

So now I’m in a real pickle!  Do I commit to one or the other?

Both do an admirable job but there will be consequences for committal.

Links below for my reference (and anyone else stumbling over these)

Outlook 2010 beta reference links.

• Outlook 2010: First Impressions - Matthew McDermott blog.
• Office 2010 Beta First Impressions: Outlook 2010 – Techn’@ weblog.
• Outlook 2010: Gmail IMAP Support – Addictive Tips blog.
• Importing Outlook 2007 PST Files to Thunderbird 2.0 - TheRage3K’s Weblog.
• projects:pst_import [OBM wiki] - “PST Import XPI is a Thunderbird plugin, based on readpst, that allows importing Outlook PST in Thunderbird, and select which email folder to import.”.

Thunderbird 3.0 reference links

• Thunderbird 3 Officially Released with New Features, Improved Look - Lifehacker
• Thunderbird - It’s All Yours – Official Mozilla download site for Thunderbird.
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition 3.0 - PortableApps.com. USB Portable version
• MozBackup - Backup tool for Firefox and Thunderbird. – Always works like a charm for me!
• Backup Thunderbird emails & profile (or restore from backup). – freemailtutorials.com – An in-depth guide to manual and automated backups and restorations of Thunderbird profiles. Contains profile path locations for reference.
• Thunderbird 2.0 - Gmail Help. I couldn’t find one for Thunderbird 3.0 and these settings should have worked but didn’t let me send outbound mail from TBird 3.0 through my Gmail account.
• Thunderbird 3 and Gmail • mozillaZine Forums. so then I eventually found the correct settings (or at least ones that worked) in this post from Pigdog89 and so.salty:

server name: smtp.gmail.com
port: 465
username: myname@gmail.com
use secure: No
Connection security: -

Lightning Project (Calendar for Thunderbird)

To help add calendaring functionality to T-Bird, I’ve relied on the Lightning project XPI add-on.  Only it isn’t quite yet ready for TBird 3.0 compatibility.

Here’s how I got Lightning working in Thunderbird 3.0

• Lightning - Project Home – Mozilla’s main page for the Lightning project addon.
• Release Status - Lightning for Thunderbird 3 – Long story short….it’s coming.
• Lightning 1.0beta1 release candidate is available – So to get Lightning going in Thunderbird 3.0 you have to be willing to try/use the RC/beta versions.  So far it’s been nice and stable on my Windows 7 system.

To install these builds in Thunderbird 3, please follow these steps:

1. Download the build for your operating system to a folder on your hard disk
   UPDATE: Please make sure, that you right-click on the links above and choose "Save Link as...". Otherwise Firefox will try to install Lightning and you will get an error message like "Lightning 1.0b1 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox."
2. Open Thunderbird, then open its add-on manager via Tools --> Add-ons (or the corresponding entry in your language)
3. Click on the "Install..." button on the lower left and navigate for the lightning.xpi file that you just downloaded.
4. Restart Thunderbird after the add-on installation has been performed. Voila!

Note: You will see there are two XPI files in the download.  Get them both; lightning-all.xpi is the main file while gdata-provider.xpi ties Lightning into your Google gCalendar.

• Calendar Weblog – ongoing information and news about the Lightning project (blog style).
• Index of /pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/win32-xpi. – Nightly Lightning release source link.

IMAP vs POP

As best I can tell, I’m using POP settings/access for Thunderbird for my mail clients including Gmail.  However Outlook 2010 may be actually using IAMP settings for Gmail connectivity.  I’ve not had the time to dive into the settings to verify.  The Outlook 2010 setup wizard took what I fed it regarding my Gmail account and seemed very pleased.  Not 100% sure what it did just yet.

I’m not sold yet if I want to convert my Thunderbird settings to use IMAP as well or not.  I think so.

I think there is some benefit but my brain is tired from all the holiday food and distractions and I’m having trouble focusing.

• Use Gmail IMAP in Microsoft Outlook 2007 :: the How-To Geek.
• Getting started with IMAP for Gmail - Gmail Help.
• Enable IMAP in Gmail - Gmail Help.

For reference….

Claus V.