How to change where Thunderbird saves your mail

I got a good one yesterday.  Someone asked me if you can change where Thunderbird saves your mailboxes.  Apparently, this user prefers to have his saved in an easy to find place so he can back it up along with his other documents and files.  After some hunting, I found this:

1. Open Thunderbird and go to Tools > Account Settings
2. Click on “Server Settings” under the account you want to modify
3. At the bottom of the windows, you’ll see a box under the name “Local Directory”.  Change this location to any folder you wish and that’s where Thunderbird will store your mailboxes from that point forward.

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How to empty your trash automatically

So you’re like one of my co-workers and you never remember to empty your trash. That’s perfectly fine, until Thunderbird starts running a little pokey and then after a few weeks, this pokiness becomes unbearable. In reality, Thunderbird should be able to handle it, but either way, you threw it away, so there’s no reason to save it. So here’s what you do:

Open Thunderbird and go to Tools > Account Settings.

Under the name of your email account, go to Server Settings.

At the bottom of this page, you’ll see a checkbox labeled “Empty Trash on Exit”. Check that box and everytime you close Thunderbird, it will empty your trash for you. It doesn’t do floors or laundry, but there might be an extension…

How to change how often TB checks for new mail

The default setting for Thunderbird to check for new mail is 10 minutes. Some people prefer to get it more often than that (I know I do). To change this setting, go to Tools > Account Settings. This will open the Account Settings options. From here, click on the “Server Settings” option listed under the email account for which you want to change the time. The second section, labeled Server Settings, has the setting for “Check for new messages every _ minutes”. Change that number to whatever you want and presto!