Need Help: Mozilla Thunderbird Issue

[Drew Wilson]

Well, I got a chance to help an older person in need recently. She bought a new computer to replace an older one (an old Windows XP box that already had one hard drive failure). Now, she's running a brand new Windows 7 HP.

Unfortunately, she ran in to a problem.

The "people at the store" told her that "everything was ready to go", essentially telling her that she had Microsoft Office and all that (I would be suspicious of that, but I never had a chance to ask if they mean that by having WordPad installed or the whole office suite installed) Well, anyway, a whole lot of stuff she expected to be on there wasn't on there. Microsoft Office? Not there. Outlook? Non-existant. She was rather unhappy to say the least, but she let the warranty lapse before she got around to plugging it all in.

Well, I had this cunning plan to interject before she wound up spending tonnes of money on overpriced software by installing a whole bunch of Open Source stuff for her. First, FireFox. Second, Open Office. Third, Thunderbird.

She seemed happy with that and everything was going according to plan until I hit a small snag - Thunderbird.

I don't use Thunderbird sadly, so I don't really know all the ins and outs of it per-se - hence how I got stuck.

I ran in to the first problem when typing in the password and e-mail credentials (this is an ISP-based e-mail service). It just kept telling me that the client couldn't connect to the POP3 because the credentials were inaccurate. Very strange since the same credentials works on the webmail client (which she hates to death). Figuring it was some setting not configured correctly, I started digging. I turned on trusty old Google which, surprisingly, didn't have much to offer. I misread one posting and changed the port from 110 (default setting) to 1500. That alone made all the error messages go away and allowed me to get the client to connect (WTF?).

So, thinking I had fixed everything by changing the port, I went about testing the send and receive mail thingy. No new messages. Well, maybe I should send something to see if it's really working. So I sent something from her e-mail to mine, made some fixes, sent another, worked just fine. Then I responded to the e-mail to see if it's receiving e-mail just fine. No e-mail. Clicked on the button several times to get it to receive the e-mail. No new messages. I check my e-mail to make sure the e-mail didn't bounce, but nothing. So... I get her to log in to her webmail client to see if it went and, sure enough, it's there. So now I'm stuck with this e-mail client that can send, but not receive. The only recommendation I was ever able to really find was to not use encrypted connections as that has been known to cause problems.

The good news is that she uses Gmail and Hotmail mostly any way, but I'm really hoping to figure out what exactly went wrong so she can use Thunderbird. Any ideas what the problem could be? I suggested she call her ISP about it to see if they can think of something, but she's very reluctant to do this.

[RACKnRAIL]

I found Thunderbird a bit finicky to set up, where Office Outlook was a breeze. For whatever reasons Thunderbird didn't want to accept the same pop mail settings as outlook. If I recall I found a solution online (google). Maybe at Mozilla's forums, but I'm not sure. I did manage to get it working. I can't remember if it was checking server authentication or something like that, but it was something simple.

http://www.freeemailtutorials.com/mo...ailAccount.cwd

[Drew Wilson]

The bad news here is the fact that I could only get Outlook on the old box to do SMTP (which sucked because you can't delete e-mails that way on the current set-up). Tinkering made POP connections half work, so the new box has, I think, a better working set-up because POP was actually connectable. I, unfortunately, have no set-up that fully works from the previous client. There was a time when her Outlook client was fully functional, but that was on a hard drive that failed a few years ago (with help, figured that it was simply corrupted)

[mountain_rage]

Make sure you have the proper server for the pop forwarding. Many ISP's have numerous servers that give you different access. Usually the simplest server is only for SMTP access. You also at times need to activate Pop 3 online through the user account settings. Since I have only done this the odd time for my parents and my aunt, I also think there might sometimes be a specific access port.

Good community to search for a solution.
http://www.dslreports.com/

Server list
http://www.realifewebdesigns.com/web...pop3-smtp.html

Also, you might want to install LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. It is the new community branching from OpenOffice. Since Sun has been purchased there was a fear that the project would be shut down. So the open source community branched off and are replacing all code that might belong to Sun. My experience with it so far is that it is a lot faster and easier to use. Another good option is also GooOffice.

http://www.libreoffice.org/
http://go-oo.org/

[w31n3r]

MR pretty much sums it up there. i'll give GooOffice a go too so thanks for the heads up on that MR.

the only thing i might change is in using windows live mail instead of thunderbird. it's tightly integrated into win7 and you will probably get less calls to fix it than with TB. not open source but free, easy to use and *gasp* much much lighter than TB!

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mail?os=other

[Drew Wilson]

I'll check it out W31n3r, thanks!

The only reason I chose Open Office was because I know my way around the program a fair bit, though I readily admit, I should have tried LibreOffice way sooner then I have.

Also, took a look at the servername links and the ISP she's on isn't on there. :frown: Nice find though! Very interesting site! I'll poke around the DSLforums, not sure why I didn't think of that sooner.

Sorry for the slow reply, being inundated with things to write about on the front page.

[mountain_rage]

LibreOffice is basically identical for the most part, so no worries on relearning the interface. They have minimal interface changes, it is more in functionality and code that the changes were made. GooOffice is a similar situation, its just a sub development of Open Office. They tend to work out common issues people have with OpenOffice and add features to make it more compatible and user friendly.

[w31n3r]

if your ISP isn't on the list of supported providers, it means you have to manually configure the account. while setting up the account in live mail, make sure you select/check the "manually configure settings" on the first page of the wizard. all you need is server address for incoming/outgoing mails and port nos., encryption type and you're done. most (probably all) ISPs keep this info on their website.