From MozillaZine Knowledge Base

This article was written for Thunderbird but also applies to Mozilla Suite / SeaMonkey (though some menu sequences may differ).

Account Settings is a dialog where you can configure settings for your accounts.

You can open Account Settings in three ways:

• From the Tools menu or the Edit menu, depending on your operating system and the Mozilla application.
• From the folder pane. Get a context menu for the account name (for example, by right-clicking it) and choose: Properties
• From the account's main ("account central") page. Select the account itself in the folder pane, and in the main pane click the link: "View settings for this account"

Account Settings always shows settings for all your accounts, including Local Folders, no matter which account you open it from.

At the bottom, below all your accounts, it has settings for your outgoing (SMTP) mail servers.

For information about the relationships between accounts, servers and identities, see: Mail concepts

Settings for each account

Account Settings has various pages of settings for each account, depending on the type of account. Some of the settings are server settings, relating to incoming mail from the account's server. The other settings are identity settings, relating to your identities for outgoing mail. Unfortunately, the server settings and identity settings are mixed together in a confusing way.

The Account Name setting on the account's main page is only for your information. Thunderbird does not use it for any other purpose.

Server settings

Settings on the following pages relate to the account's server for incoming messages:

• Server Settings (see: Creating accounts in Thunderbird for popular email providers)
• Disk Space (for POP3 servers)
• Offline & Disk Space (for IMAP servers)
• Junk Settings (see: Junk Mail Controls)
• Return receipts (see: Figuring out whether the recipient read your message)

Identity settings

Settings on the following pages relate to the account's default identity for outgoing messages:

• Copies & Folders
• Composition & Addressing (see: Mail content types)
• Security (see: Message security)

To work with settings for all the account's identities, press the Manage Identities button on the account's main page. To change an identity's settings, select it in the list and press the Edit... button to see the Identity Settings dialog.

The top identity in the list is the account's default identity. Its settings are duplicated, appearing both in Account Settings and in its Identity settings dialog.

For more information, see: Multiple identities per e-mail account

Note:  Security settings are not available in the Identity Settings dialog. For more information about this bug, see: Installing an SMIME certificate

Outgoing Server (SMTP) settings

Use the Outgoing Server (SMTP) page to work with the master list of SMTP servers.

For more information, see: Multiple_SMTP_servers_-_Thunderbird

Advanced

Settings in Account Settings are stored as preferences. For information about other ways to work with them, see: Editing configuration

In the preferences, each account, server and identity has a number. You can identify various types of preference by looking for the following prefixes:

See also

• Mail concepts

External links

• Mail Tweak extension—options for expanding only the current account, and for more direct access to the Outgoing Server (SMTP) page
• Mozilla technical documentation about account settings