How to set up Thunderbird to send and receive your Gmail

September 27th, 2007 by Ross McKillop |  Print This Post

This is a requested tutorial for Marcelo. It will take you through the steps to set up Gmail using the Mozilla Thunderbird email client.

1. The first thing you have to do is enable POP email for your Gmail account. Sign in to Gmail and click the Settings link at the top of the page. Select the Forwarding and POP tab.

   If you want to download all of the email messages you’ve ever received at your gmail address, to Thunderbird, select Enable POP for all mail. Keep in mind, Gmail allows for a lot of storage, so you may be downloading hundreds of megabytes of email and attachments (maybe even gigabytes).

   If you want to only download messages received from now on, select Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on. This option won’t download all of your previous Gmail messages, but it makes getting started using Thunderbird much faster.

   Now decide if want to keep an unread copy of each message on the Gmail server, if you want to mark each message downloaded to Thunderbird as “Archived” (but still stored on the Gmail server) - or if you want to delete it from Gmail entirely once Thunderbird downloads it. Once you’ve made your choice, click Save Changes.


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2. Now launch Thunderbird. If this is your first time using it, the New Account Setup wizard will launch. If it doesn’t, you can start it up by selecting File -> New -> Account. Select Gmail from the list of options, and then click Continue.


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3. Enter your name and the first part of your @gmail.com address in the spaces provided. note: you don’t have to enter @gmail.com, Thunderbird will do it for you. Click Continue to go on to the next step.


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4. If you want to download your messages now (of which there could be many, if you opted to Enable POP for all mail back in step 1) leave a check in the box labeled Download messages now. Click Done when you’re ready.


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5. Enter your password to download your messages now. If you opted to Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on back in step 1, you may not have any new messages to download. Place a check in the box labeled Use Password Manager to remember this password if you don’t want to enter it every time you check your email. Click OK.


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6. If you decided to let Thunderbird remember your password, you’ll get an Alert pop-up. Give it a read, then click OK.


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7. Welcome to Thunderbird! Lets make sure everything is working by sending ourselves a message. Click the Write button.


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8. Enter your own Gmail address in the To: field. Give the message a subject and enter something in the body (if you want). When you’re done, click Send.


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9. And since this is the first time you’ve sent a message in Thunderbird using Gmail, you’ll be prompted to enter your password again. Place a check in the box labeled Use Password Manager to remember this password if you don’t want to enter it every time you send email, and then click OK.


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10. Wait a minute or three, and then click the Get Mail button. The test message should download to Thunderbird. Note: I’ve noticed that there can be a 5-10 minute delay, at times, when enabling POP mail in Gmail. So if you’ve flown through these steps, you might have sent a message to yourself before Gmail actually enabled POP mail. Try sending yourself another message in 10 minutes before you start double-checking your settings. Otherwise, you’re done and off to the races!


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