Keep it working - Thunderbird

This article suggests one way to to keep Thunderbird working and avoid serious problems. It's intended for new users, so it keeps things simple and presents few alternatives. The assumption is when you get more experience you may do things differently as you understand the tradeoffs.

• Keep the Inbox empty. Store any new messages in another folder after you've read them, perhaps a child folder in Local Folders. This will help avoid corrupting your Inbox folder.

• Regularly compact your Inbox folder and any folders you delete messages in or move messages from. Once a week is a useful rule of thumb though how often depends upon how many messages you get and how critical they are to you. Ideally you would configure Thunderbird to automatically compact folders for you by setting it to compact when it will save 75KB (or another low value) and installing the AutoMsgSelect extension (so that you don't get prompted for permission whenever it wants to compact a folder). For further information on these settings, see the Compacting folders article.

• Regularly back up your profile. As a minimum back up your profile once you get Thunderbird working, and every time you upgrade. If you're using a version of Thunderbird that automatically upgrades (v1.5 or later), back up your profile after it upgrades. Use Mozbackup to do this if you're using Windows.

• Don't use the "default" profile name. Thunderbird has a nasty habit of once in a great while forgetting about the existence of a profile if it uses the default name. When this occurs you suddenly start up in the new account manager. You can avoid this by creating your profile with the Profile Manager and choosing a unique name. You can also specify where you want the profile to be stored. For example, on Windows you could have a c:\profiles directory and within it store your Thunderbird profile in one subdirectory and your Firefox profile in another subdirectory. This makes it much easier to find your profile if you need to edit one of its files. Just do not store your profile within your Thunderbird program installation directory or it may be deleted when you upgrade.

• Check that your antivirus software isn't configured to delete your Inbox if you get a virus. If it doesn't support quarantining the infected message, v1.5 has a workaround that may help.

• Don't check for viruses in messages you send. This avoids some interoperability problems, and if the recipient isn't already using a anti-virus program they have bigger problems to worry about than your message.

• Don't keep a copy of your messages on the POP server without providing some way to automatically get rid of them later on. If you use "Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings -> Leave message on server" to keep a copy of the original message on the POP server after Thunderbird checks for new mail (so that you can still access it via webmail), set the number of days it should keep the copy.

• Only install extensions from Mozilla add-ons or the Extensions Mirror. Not every extension is well behaved. These are the two most popular web sites for Thunderbird extensions so there is a better chance the extension has been tested and/or used by a lot of other users.

• Follow the upgrade instructions if you manually upgrade.