Jul 29, 2013

Brief Introduction of Thunderbird Mail Application


Electronic mails are the fastest way of transferring information in every field. Although there are a number of email client applications available for sending and receiving emails. Every email application client has their own features. From the list of email application clients, I am introducing Thunderbird email application client. 



Thunderbird Mail Application: - Thunderbird mail application is a mail client designed by Mozilla. Basically it’s an open source cross platform used as newsgroup, newsfeed, chat purpose and for sending and receiving emails. Along with POP and IMAP, Thunderbird also supports for LDAP account (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) that is an additional benefit. Moreover Thunderbird also supports for different operating system that is another great advantage for user. List of Operating Systems on which Thunderbird is operated i.e.
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • OSX
  • Open Solaris
  • Free BSDOS/2 and ecomStation
Default location of Thunderbird in Windows Directory is:
  • For users of Windows 2000/XP/2003:
C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Thunderbird
  • For users of Windows NT
C:\WINNT\Profiles\[userName]\Application Data\Thunderbird
  • For Windows 98/98SE/ME
C:\Windows\Application Data\Thunderbird
NOTE: Run windows on default "C:\" drive or partition
  • For Mac OS X
  • ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/.
For user of Linux
  • Linux/UNIX~/.thunderbird /xxxxxxxx.default/.

Mail Messages Format of Thunderbird Application:
Mozilla Thunderbird files are stored in profile folder associated with user profile. User’s mails are stored in mail folders in the MBOX format. To find these mailboxes, user can open their profile folder
The profile folder contains all configuration files of Mozilla Thunderbird. To find out the location of mail, follow these steps:
  1. Point to Tools menu apply command entitle as Settings.
  2. Now, select the desired account.
  3. Open option entitle as “Server settings”.
  4. Folder named as “Local directory” will open.
  5. Now, copy the information you receive from the Local directory and paste it in to the Windows Explorer.
By using these steps, user will able to see their mail folders
Thunderbird supports for three types of mail format. File Format that are supported by Thunderbird are:
  • Mbox
  • Mork
  • Sqlite
Let us discuss in brief about the MBOX file format which is of common use.


MBOX FILES:
MBOX files are basically collection of all electronic mails present in a mailbox. These files contain all mail messages in form of a single plain text file. In MBOX files, all messages are concatenated in a single file in form of string. These messages start with a line consist of five letters i.e. "From" and followed by a space in sender's e-mail address. To append the message with other mail, a blank line is added at the end of every message.

Modified Formats of MBOX Family: Mbox files are associated with four types of formats i.e
  • mboxo,
  • mboxrd,
  • mboxcl,
  • mboxcl2.
Example of Mbox file
From MAILER-DAEMON Sat Aug 12:08:34 2012
From: Aida <aida@demo.com>
To: amanda < amanda @ demo.com>
Subject: Demo message
Body of the message
>From()
How to configure your mail
From MAILER-DAEMON Sat Aug 12:08:34 2012
From: Aida <aida@demo.com>
To: amanda < amanda @ demo.com>
Subject: Demo message part2
This is the second body.

Location of thunderbird files i.e.
Here tilde character (~) indicates to Home Folder of current user

Supporting Clients for MBOX files are:
Supporting clients for MBOX files are Thunderbird, Eudora, Apple mail, Entourage, Mac Mail, Spice bird, Pocomail. The main reason behind popularity of MBOX file is their email structure that is in text form. These files can be read easily by using text processing tools and also help in saving email messages. 

 
I hope after reading above article, user is aware of Thunderbird application and file formats associated with them.

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