Mozilla Thunderbird - A Few Questions For The Experts

[JetsetBkk]

I recently got this message sent to all my Hotmail accounts:

Dear Microsoft Outlook Express customer,

Thank you for using Microsoft® Outlook® Express. Our information indicates that you use Outlook Express to access a Windows Live™ Hotmail® e-mail account via a protocol called DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol). DAV, like POP3 or IMAP, is the way that a mail client communicates with a web-based mail server.

As a valued customer, we want to provide advanced notice that as of June 30, 2008, Microsoft is disabling the DAV protocol and you will no longer be able to access your Hotmail Inbox via Outlook Express. As an alternative, we recommend that you download Windows Live Mail... blah blah blah

I've tried Windows Live Mail and it clearly uses chunks of Outlook Express code, but it's "clunky". It also doesn't import all my Outlook Express folders correctly - lots of messages go missing. But it does import my Accounts and Message Rules OK.

So I tried Mozilla Thunderbird and it feels and looks good. I've been checking all my folders and imported messages and so far I haven't found any missing.

But I haven't been able to import my Hotmail Accounts or Message Rules.

So I have 2 questions:

1. Will Thunderbird be able to access Hotmail after June 30th?

2. Is it possible to import Outlook Express Accounts and Message Rules into Thunderbird?

Cheers for any help.

[learnthaipodcast]

I'm pretty sure it will work. Thunderbird has a huuuge user base so lots of them will be using it. Check the official forum for more info: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=39

[monty]

Are you accessing your hotmail through POP (with Thunderbird)? I wasn't aware that Thunderbird could handle DAV!

If it uses the DAV protocol, it'll probably stop working along with Outlook express!

[Tywais]

1. Will Thunderbird be able to access Hotmail after June 30th?

Microsoft postpones disabling DAV

It's not clear yet about Tbird and Windows Live Hotmail. You might read this and see if it may help > How to access Windows Live Hotmail in Thunderbird

[Tywais]

"Thunderbird will still be able to interface with Hotmail via the

Webmail extensions. It is just that those of us who have been able to

select "WebDav" as the account type in the Hotmail extension will no

longer be able to do so. The existing option of "Hotmail Live

website" should continue to function.

That WebDav option in the Hotmail extension has provided greater

stability, better function, more efficient Hotmail access -

especially for large email attachments and no advertising.

When the WebDav access is withdrawn I assume that the Webmail author

will have to withdraw the IMAP offering that is currently available in

the Webmail extensions for WebDav enabled Hotmail accounts. "

Source: Google Groups

[JetsetBkk]

Thanks to all for the replies.

I'm pretty sure it will work. Thunderbird has a huuuge user base so lots of them will be using it. Check the official forum for more info: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=39

Thanks for the link - I'll be reading it soon.

Are you accessing your hotmail through POP (with Thunderbird)? I wasn't aware that Thunderbird could handle DAV!

If it uses the DAV protocol, it'll probably stop working along with Outlook express!

I've only just installed T'bird and have just started comparing all the T'bird email folders against the original Outlook Express folders to make sure all the emails were imported correctly. So far - only about 30 folders done - all is OK.

However, T'bird does not show ANY Hotmail accounts after I told it to import everything from Outlook Express, so I haven't tried accessing Hotmail yet as I'll need to add the accounts to T'bird. T'bird DOES show my Google accounts, but I haven't told it to "get mail" yet.

1. Will Thunderbird be able to access Hotmail after June 30th?

Microsoft postpones disabling DAV

It's not clear yet about Tbird and Windows Live Hotmail. You might read this and see if it may help > How to access Windows Live Hotmail in Thunderbird

Thanks for the links. Good news about postponing the disabling of DAV, although it does show that M$ has misjudged something.

I've just read the link. What a piece of gobbledegook from M$!

Recently, many customers received notification regarding Microsoft’s plan to disable the DAV protocol, which allows you to access your Windows Live Hotmail inbox from Outlook Express. From the feedback we received, it became clear that you needed additional time to evaluate alternative solutions...

BS! Windows Live Mail is crap and unacceptable as a replacement. it is M$ that needs the time (to FIX WLM)!

... and with this in mind, we are postponing the transition deadline previously announced. This means that you will continue to be able to access your Windows Live Hotmail accounts from Outlook Express beyond the June 30 transition deadline.

As Microsoft continues to evolve its products to meet your needs, we appreciate your feedback. This change to Outlook Express protocol is one such evolution and will allow for managing of multiple accounts and today’s large inboxes...

More BS. I have more the 20 Hotmail accounts, all working perfectly with OE. The need to change is driven purely by M$.

We will update you on expected future changes and alternatives with enough advance notice to ensure a smooth transition.

Try getting WLM to work would be a start.

[geoffphuket]

Thunderbird and Gmail are perfect partners. The swap maybe painful but it's worth it in the end

[A_Traveller]

The real driver for this change is the way MS run their server clusters. DAV is a proprietory protocol which allows them to manage their resources. Since they started in the desktop arena they've never shaken that focus, and so as a revenue stream forcing individuals to use 'their' service offering still seems to them sensible. However, as Geoff points out TB + GMail is an effective partnership, and though it's frustrating to move once done it makes life more flexible {e.g want to go to Linux or Apple}.

Personally these days I use yahoo for 'throwaways' and have my own .com attached emails for real activity.

Regards

Edited June 1, 2008 by A_Traveller

[JetsetBkk]

After checking more of my imported Outlook Express folders, there appears to be a problem with any folder whose T'bird path is exceeds the 256 boundary.

Outlook Express uses "folders.dbx" to keep track of folders so you can have folders nested as deeply as you like - or I should say that I have never had a problem with this. But T'bird creates a folder structure just like the email structure looks in OE, and there is clearly a limit of 256 characters.

The stupid thing is, T'bird uses up about 140 characters in the path by having the path start with this:

"C:/Documents and Settings/<username>/Application Data/Thunderbird/Profiles/x4fv0hik.default/Mail/Local Folders/Outlook Express Mail.sbd/" and then comes the folder structure from OE.

Also, if you try to create nested folders so that the overall path is greater than 256, you don't get an error - you get nothing. Even though the "OK" button is illuminated, nothing happens when you click it. You simply have to cancel the "New Subfolder" operation's window.

Pretty poor design by the T'bird team.

[A_Traveller]

Forgive the hit and run, but that puzzles me, the theoretical limit is 265 characters as a single element and effectively 32k as a path. I recall there were some problems with NTFS early on but I thought they had been resolved. MS does cheat by using elements of the registry, for managing Outlook, as opposed to accounts held within the OS, but I've never come across this problem before, nor heard of it, as expressed here. Have to take a look on the morrow though maybe someone more knowledgeable then me will have responded by then.

Regards

[Veazer]

Could you gain a few characters back by substituting '%userprofile%' for 'C:/Documents and Settings/<username>/'?

Or even adding a new environment variable for the full path?

[Rice_King]

Could you move your Thunderbird profile (as in these instruction) to somewhere such as "D:\tbird\username" to keep the path name short?

[JetsetBkk]

Forgive the hit and run, but that puzzles me, the theoretical limit is 265 characters as a single element and effectively 32k as a path. I recall there were some problems with NTFS early on but I thought they had been resolved. MS does cheat by using elements of the registry, for managing Outlook, as opposed to accounts held within the OS, but I've never come across this problem before, nor heard of it, as expressed here. Have to take a look on the morrow though maybe someone more knowledgeable then me will have responded by then.

Regards

Did you mean to type 265 or 256?

I think some of my paths are slightly more than 256, but I assumed that T'bird was doing something clever to allow a bit more than 256. I note that if an email folder in T'bird doesn't have any sub-folders, then there is no equivalent Windows folder for that email folder. Sorry - not easy to explain. Put another way, all lowest level email folders in T'bird are .msf files, not folders. There is also a file with no extension that has the same name as the .msf folder. This file contains the actual emails. So maybe this is the way T'bird gets more use out of the 256 path limit.

If you right click on a T'bird folder and click on "Copy folder location" and then paste it into, say, Notepad you can count the characters. I don't know any other way of getting the path from T'bird. Here's one of mine:

mailbox:/C|/Documents and Settings/<user name>/Application Data/Thunderbird/Profiles/x4fv0hik.default/Mail/Local Folders/Outlook Express Mail.sbd/Work

<user name> is actually my name and I don't know why the "mailbox:" is there either.

I hope you can post some thoughts on this tomorrow.

[JetsetBkk]

Could you gain a few characters back by substituting '%userprofile%' for 'C:/Documents and Settings/<username>/'?

Or even adding a new environment variable for the full path?

Actually, what I did was to get rid of a couple of the highest level folders.

So instead of all my email folders starting with "My Documents", I moved all the sub-folders up to the "Outlook Express Mail" folder. I also got rid of another high level folder too. Altogether I saved about 16 characters. I could also get rid of or rename the "Outlook Express Mail" folder to save more.

So then I deleted all my imported emails from T'bird and re-imported them - it all went cleanly. But I wish they would let you save the "import report". A very small window pops up saying how many emails from each folder of Outlook Express were imported. This window has a scroll bar so you can see all the results, but no way to save them as a file.

Deleting folders from T'bird can also be a problem if there is already a folder of the same name in the "Deleted" folder. You do get a clearly understandable error message. You have to delete the folder of the same name that's already in the "Deleted" folder before you can delete another one with the same name.

[JetsetBkk]

Could you move your Thunderbird profile (as in these instruction) to somewhere such as "D:\tbird\username" to keep the path name short?

:D Perfect! I did the same thing with Outlook Express years ago to get my OE Mail Folders and Address Book off the C: drive, and one of the things I was going to look into was to see if I could do the same with T'bird.

Thanks so much for the link. That's going to save having "Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Thunderbird\" in the path. Great!

[A_Traveller]

Glad to see you found a 'fix' and for spotting my typo. It had been a looooong weekend, unfortunately for commercial reasons. I didn't have a profile move link to hand but that would have been my workaround thought as well. though I'm going to forward this to someone I know at TB, since it suggests that TB, without the Outlook registry 'hackette' treats a path as an element, therefore being impacted by the {type slowly} 256 limitation within NTFS.

Regards

[JetsetBkk]

Glad to see you found a 'fix' and for spotting my typo. It had been a looooong weekend, unfortunately for commercial reasons. I didn't have a profile move link to hand but that would have been my workaround thought as well. though I'm going to forward this to someone I know at TB, since it suggests that TB, without the Outlook registry 'hackette' treats a path as an element, therefore being impacted by the {type slowly} 256 limitation within NTFS.

Regards

Thanks AT. I've managed to get my Gmail working after a long series of attempts. I kept getting "Connection refused by server" error messages. I Googled the problem and found that lots of people also had it, but none could give a definite reason for it.

I tried all combinations of account name, security settings and port settings. I finally got it to work by changing the "Outgoing Server (SMTP)" secure connection to "TLS" and port 587.

Now to sort out Hotmail!

[Rice_King]

I tried all combinations of account name, security settings and port settings. I finally got it to work by changing the "Outgoing Server (SMTP)" secure connection to "TLS" and port 587.

Are you using the IMAP settings with your GMail account? Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client

Now to sort out Hotmail!

This information is nearly 2 years old but I assume it is still valid Jetset. Accessing Windows Live Mail account using Thunderbird

[JetsetBkk]

I tried all combinations of account name, security settings and port settings. I finally got it to work by changing the "Outgoing Server (SMTP)" secure connection to "TLS" and port 587.

Are you using the IMAP settings with your GMail account? Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client

No. I had a look at IMAP and I think I prefer POP. I like to download my emails from the server, store them on my PC and delete them from the server. So POP does that OK. I have never gotten used to the way GMail works using a browser with "conversations" and clever search tools. So I download all my emails from Gmail and store them in the appropriate folders on my PC.

As I understand it, IMAP allows you to work with the emails while they are stored on the server and you don't download them to your PC. I'm afraid this old dog likes to download to his PC and work with them there! I think this maybe where "Windows Live Mail" is going - a "live" connection to the mail server. I simply don't feel comfortable doing it that way.

I think IMAP also means you cannot see your emails if you're not online to the server, but I may be wrong on that.

Now to sort out Hotmail!

This information is nearly 2 years old but I assume it is still valid Jetset. Accessing Windows Live Mail account using Thunderbird

Thanks for that link. It looks very interesting indeed. I've only recently read about the "Webmail" extension for Tbird in the last couple of days on other forums, but never really understood what they were talking about. It's all becoming very clear now! . I'll let you know how I get on.

[Rice_King]

As I understand it, IMAP allows you to work with the emails while they are stored on the server and you don't download them to your PC. I'm afraid this old dog likes to download to his PC and work with them there! I think this maybe where "Windows Live Mail" is going - a "live" connection to the mail server. I simply don't feel comfortable doing it that way.

I think IMAP also means you cannot see your emails if you're not online to the server, but I may be wrong on that.

You can choose to download the entire message or just the headers. In my case I use BOTH methods. I have my inbox set to download the entire message and the junk and spam folders set to download the headers only. Why should I need to read the entire email unless they are not, in fact, spam or junk? (I really just need to see the title.) If it appears to be a legitimate email, I drag it to the inbox where the entire email is then downloaded. With this setup, I have the legitimate email messages on my hard drive where I can choose to move, copy, reply, or delete them. Messages I deleted, replied to, etc while offline will then be dealt with the same way on the mail servers the next time I connect to the internet.

Now I admit, I use Outlook (not OE) to connect to my GMail account. But I should think that TB will allow you to make the same settings regarding downloading just the headers for one folder while allowing a full download of the message to the inbox (or other folders for that matter.)

Edited June 2, 2008 by Rice_King

[JetsetBkk]

You can choose to download the entire message or just the headers. In my case I use BOTH methods. I have my inbox set to download the entire message and the junk and spam folders set to download the headers only. Why should I need to read the entire email unless they are not, in fact, spam or junk? (I really just need to see the title.) If it appears to be a legitimate email, I drag it to the inbox where the entire email is then downloaded. With this setup, I have the legitimate email messages on my hard drive where I can choose to move, copy, reply, or delete them. Messages I deleted, replied to, etc while offline will then be dealt with the same way on the mail servers the next time I connect to the internet.

OK, I see. I think I'll have to play around with Tbird to see exactly what can be done.

I can still use Outlook Express to generate messages from my Hotmail accounts to my Gmail accounts and then use Tbird to collect the mail. This way I can experiment with the collection methods to see what best suits my needs. I'll also send messages from OE to my Hotmail accounts to test Tbird's Hotmail access.

Now I admit, I use Outlook (not OE) to connect to my GMail account. But I should think that TB will allow you to make the same settings regarding downloading just the headers for one folder while allowing a full download of the message to the inbox (or other folders for that matter.)

I used Outlook at work as it was the company standard but when I tried to use it at home with 20+ Hotmail POP accounts, Outlook couldn't handle it - it was incredibly slow and often just didn't work. But Outlook Express never had that problem so I've been using that for many years.

[A_Traveller]

Re path length. I got a reply back from TB with an acknowledgement that this is a known issue, which has apparently been resolved in TB 3. It is technically problematic to put the fix into 2.x and it is notified to Mozilla about 3 times a year. The silent failure issue is one which has however been worked on to minimise its occurrences in other areas. The move profile workaround is the perceived wisdom by the by.

My own take on this is that the whole Mozilla operation is a victim of its success with resources tied to Firefox to the detriment of other projects, especially TB. The initial TB3 alpha was produced back in 06 and I hope will get due focus once FF 3 is out the door.

Regards

[JetsetBkk]

Re path length. I got a reply back from TB with an acknowledgement that this is a known issue, which has apparently been resolved in TB 3. It is technically problematic to put the fix into 2.x and it is notified to Mozilla about 3 times a year. The silent failure issue is one which has how ever been worked on to minimise its occurrences in other areas. The move profile workaround is the perceived wisdom by the by.

My own take on this is that the whole Mozilla operation is a victim of its success with resources tied to Firefox to the detriment of other projects, especially TB. The initial TB3 alpha was produced back in 06 and I hope will get due focus once FF 3 is out the door.

Regards

Thanks for posting this info. I agree about the 'move profile' workaround - it removes a lot of characters from the path allowing a more nested structure as well as getting nearly half a gigabyte of data off my C: drive so that my image backups are smaller and quicker to make.

If they make TB better than OE the same way as FF is better than IE, there will be a lot of very happy people around!

I got my Hotmail access working last night. The bug (bug #373573) regarding multiple SMTP servers was a bit of a pain to get my head around, but there was enough info on what to do to overcome it. That's another fix slated for TB3. I'll be doing some more Hotmail testing later.