Will Mozilla Thunderbird work on two separate systems?

Question

I use Thunderbird at home on my laptop and I was wondering if it will pose any problem if I download it and use it at work. Because when I open Thunderbird at home, it "steals" the mail from my mail client (comcast.net) and moves it into Thunderbird at home. I just want to be sure that the Thunderbird at home is synced with my Thunderbird at work.

Answer 1

Yes it is possible, somewhere in Thunderbird should be a setting that allows you leave the emails on the server. This means you can read the emails without having them downloaded to your computer.

BTW... Thunderbird is not "stealing" your emails from Comcast, it appears you have it set as your default email program which means it automatically downloads the emails sent to your Comcast address.

Answer 2

The question obviously isn't if Thunderbird will work on two system, because obviously it will "work".  The question is how to keep your e-mail synced.  If you must use POP3, then on both systems you can choose to not delete your mails from the server and then set a reasonable time frame in future for deletion, such as a week or two.  If you wait for longer than that time period to download to one of your systems, one of them may not get all the mail.  Just hunt around Account Settings menu to see what I mean.  Its pretty clear.

The problem will occur with sent mail.  If you send from one account, it won't be visible in the other account.  You can always BCC yourself to make sure both have a copy, but thats not so pretty.

The very best solution is to use IMAP.   With IMAP mail stay saved on the server and you can connect any number of different programs and systems to the server and always be in sync.  I don't know if Comcast offer that option, I doubt it, but you may want to look for a paid service and switch.  Such services can be quite cheap, and you have to ask yourself how much your time is worth and how much time the convenience might save you.

Answer 3

MOZILLAAAA,

i love that thing

Answer 4

Thunderbird can be installed on both machines, but you're going to have to juggle the delete-after-download option on all but one.  Here's how:

1. In Thunderbird, click the Tools->Account Settings menu item.

2. Open the branch for the email account in question.

3. Click the Settings sub-branch.

4. Check the checkbox for Leave Messages on Server.

5. Click OK.

You might also want to turn off automatic download and download only when you're ready.

Obviously, you're going to have to manage the messages on the server somehow, usually by having one computer that DOES delete them after downloading them.

Hope that helps.