From MozillaZine Knowledge Base

Mailing lists permit the addition of multiple addresses to a message at one time by entering the list name as if it was an email address. A mailing list currently can only contain addresses from a single address book and doesn't have a separate existence, its basically just a subset of a address book. That is a implementation restriction that will eventually be changed. [1] [2]

Thunderbird displays 3 address lines by default when you compose a message. It will add additional lines as needed. If you just want to change the number of lines use the Address Widget Lines add-on to change the default (1 to 12 lines), rather than using a mailing list.

Create a new mailing list

1. In the main window, click on the "Address Book" icon to open the Address Book window (or use menu path Tools->Address Book, or press Ctrl+Shift+B).

2. Click on the "New List" icon (or go "File -> New -> Mailing List...").

3. In the dialog box that pops up, use the drop-down list to select the address book to which you want the new list to belong. Also type in the list name and, if you wish, a nickname and description.

4. To enter addresses into the list, you can:

• Type them in by hand. (Note, addresses need not exist in the parent Address Book before being entered as members of the list. However, if they do exist, auto-completion will be invoked during typing, thus facilitating entry of the email address. When corresponding Address cards do not previously exist, skeleton address cards will be created in the parent Address Book). This method only permits entry of the name and email address combination at the time so any data beyond the email address, eg. Contact's nickname, street address, phone number, company name, etc. will need to be entered separately into the corresponding address card in the parent Address Book, either before or after completing addition of that address to the list.

• Copy them from the source of a message, and paste them into the list.

• Close the dialog box for the list you just created, and the list will now appear in the "Address Books" pane, under the address book to which it belongs. You can now drag-and-drop (some people may need to hold Ctrl key when drag-and-dropping) individual address cards from any address book onto the list. Important: although the new list will be shown in both the "Address Books" pane (on the left) and the "Contacts" pane (on the right), make sure you drag-and-drop the address cards onto the list where it appears in the Address Books pane.

Compose a message addressed to a mailing list

To compose a message addressed to a mailing list that you've created, do any one of the following:

• With the Address Book window open, select the mailing list you want to use from the Contacts pane (on the right side of the window) and click on the "Write" button on the toolbar. Alternatively, right-click on the mailing list in the "Contacts" pane and choose "Write". A new Compose window will pop open, with the name of the mailing list shown on a single line in the "To" field.

• With the Address Book window open, select the mailing list you want to use from the Address Books pane (on the left side of the window) and click on the Write button on the toolbar. A new Compose window will pop open, with each recipient on the mailing list shown on a separate line in the "To" field.

• From the main window, click on the "Write" button on the toolbar. In the Compose window that pops open, double-click on the mailing list in the Contacts sidebar. Alternatively, right-click on the mailing list in the "Contacts" sidebar and choose "Add to To field". (If the "Contacts" sidebar is not open, you'll need to first open it by selecting "View -> Contacts Sidebar" or by clicking on the "Contacts" button on the toolbar.) In the Compose window, the name of the mailing list should now appear on a single line in the "To" field.

• In the Compose window, type the nickname for the mailing list in the "To" field and press the Enter key. The name shown in the "To" field should change to the full name of the mailing list.

No matter which of these options you use, the email addresses of everyone on the mailing list will be visible to anyone who receives the message, even if all that you see in the "To" field is the name of the mailing list. If you do not want your recipients to see all the addresses, then use the small drop-down list next to the "To" field to change "To" to "Bcc".

Most email providers impose a limit on the number of recipients when sending a message. Gmail for example imposes a limit of 100 when using a email client. If its a problem and you have several accounts check whether any of the other accounts have a higher limit. Otherwise you probably need to break the mailing list into multiple lists, and send the message multiple times. In extreme cases you might want to think about creating a Yahoo Group or Google Group instead.

Import and export a mailing list

Thunderbird 3.0 (and later versions) doesn't support importing and exporting mailing lists. You can select a mailing list and export it as a address book, but it only knows how to import it as an address book, not a mailing list. The MoreFunctionsForAddressBook add-on adds explicit support for exporting and importing mailing lists.

Use the AddressContext extension to create a list

The AddressContext extension provides an easier way to create a list. If you select one or more messages in the folder listing, right click on the selection and then select addressContext it gives you the option to add either all the senders or all the recipients to a list. However, if you want to add any other email addresses to the list you have to do that normally.

Avoid sending to an address in a mailing list

The NotTo extension adds a "NotTo" option to the drop down list which can be used to avoid sending a message to the specified addresses despite their being included in a mailing list. It also provides a "NotTo Forward" option which can be used to avoid forwarding a message to the original sender. There is a completely rewritten version by another author for 3.1 called NotTo_Ojx

The AddExpandedList extension lets you right click on a mailing list in the Contacts pane, and tell it to add the contents of the list as seperate To:, CC:, or BCC: fields. The PopMailListRecipients add-on adds a button to expand a mailing list into separate entries. The advantage of these two extensions is that you don't have to trust that the extension removed an entry.

Validate a mailing list

The ThunderPlunger extension has a validate email address function that can be run from the address book if you want to detect and delete invalid email addresses before sending a message using a list. You can check either a single card, or tell it to check the addresses for an entire address book. The downside is it calls a web service provided by the author. The home page discusses concerns that this is a scheme to harvest email addresses, and has a link to the web services source code and more information.

Send messages separately

The Personalize tweak in the MailTweak add-on is mainly used to personalize messages using data from your address book or a .CSV file but it also creates an individual copy of the message for each recipient, regardless of how the recipient was specified. This can be useful if your email provider blocks or labels as SPAM messages from long mailing lists. However, each recipient must be in your address book, even if you're not using any address book fields to personalize the message. Performance will also be poor, and you might get a script busy or stopped responding error message, despairing upon how many recipients you have. At some point you will be better off using either a specialized bulk mailing program or a service such as Yahoo Groups.

MailTweak doesn't work well with recent versions of Thunderbird (it also requires disabling version checking). Its author has also abandoned it and can't be reached. Another way to send an individual copy of the message for each recipient is to use the MailMerge add-on.

Search for addresses in your messages and add them to an address book

The Email Address Crawler extension adds all of addresses from the selected folder and its children to the specified address book. You can specify whether it should search the To, CC or From headers and how many times it needs to find an address before adding it. This is useful if you want to create a mailing list for a large group. PC Magazine has an article about the add-on here.

To use it select a folder in the folder pane, right click it and select "crawl folder for email addresses" from the context menu. That will bring up a search parameters window.

The Incoming Addresses Collector extension can be used to either automatically add incoming addresses to an address book or add them from selected messages. It supports using regular expressions to restrict which addresses get added.

Nested mailing lists

Thunderbird 2.x supports using a mailing list that includes another mailing list, as long as both used addresses in the same address book. Thunderbird 3.0 doesn't support that feature. [3][4][5]

Examine HTML

If you plan on sending a HTML newsletter and want to do more than just read a sample copy you sent yourself beforehand, you could use the Chromebug add-on to examine the HTML. Its based on modifications to Firebug. Using "Edit -> Select Element by Click" with the DOM Inspector add-on might also be useful.

See also

• BCC
• Enter email addresses
• Mail merge
• Multiple SMTP servers

External links

• Discussion about nested lists
• Display mailing list header extension
• Plain Address extension can remove duplicated addresses when sending, specific addresses when replying, and remove comments in headers.
• Reply to list extension
• Experimental Mailing List Manager add-on. Mozilla Messaging plans on eventually adding its functionality to Thunderbird after they've gotten enough feedback.