Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a cross-platform e-mail, Usenet, and RSS reader from Mozilla. The following steps outline how to set up a Virginia Tech e-mail account with Thunderbird 2. The last steps about SSL are essential to sending mail from off-campus with some Internet service providers such as Verizon.

Setting up your Virginia Tech account

Adding the account with the account wizard

We will need to add the VT e-mail account using the account wizard. If you have no other accounts in Thunderbird, the account wizard should start up automatically. If not, go to the Edit menu, click on Account Settings, and click the Add account... button to make it appear. NOTE: In Windows this is in the Tools menu, and in Mac OS X is probably in the Thunderbird menu.

Email account should be automatically selected. If not, select it and click Next.

The Name field will list whatever you put here in the From: line of those who receive e-mail from you using Thunderbird. You should probably go ahead and enter your full name here. Enter pid@vt.edu for the e-mail address, replacing pid with your Virginia Tech PID. Then click Next.

Be sure the POP button is selected, enter pop.vt.edu for the incoming server, and then enter auth.smtp.vt.edu for the outgoing server. If you want to leave your messages on the server and use IMAP instead, click the IMAP button and enter imap.vt.edu for the incoming server. Note that if you have accounts in Thunderbird already, the software will default to the outgoing server of one of your previous accounts. We will need to fix this later if that is the case. Click Next.

Make sure your PID is entered in both fields and click Next. If there are previous accounts, only the first field will appear.

The Knowledge Base says to call your account VT Mail, but you can really call it anything you want. Thunderbird defaults to the e-mail address. Change it if you want and click Next.

Make sure to uncheck the Download messages now box, since we will need to make some extra changes before we can connect. If you chose the IMAP option, or if you have set up an account before, the box will be absent. Click Finish.

Enabling SSL

Sadly Thunderbird does not ask in the wizard if your server uses SSL, and assumes that it does not. However, the VT mail server does, so we will need to enable this before we can connect to it. While it is not absolutely necessary to setup SSL SMTP (outgoing mail) if you will only ever send mail from on-campus, setting it up is recommended.

Get to the Account Settings dialog box.

Click Server Settings on the left, and click on the SSL button to the right.

Now click on Outgoing Server (SMTP) on the left, find auth.smtp.vt.edu in the list, click on it and click the Edit... button. If you had to skip entering it in when you made the account, click Add... and enter it in now. In any case make sure that the SSL button is selected, Use name and password is checked, and your PID is in the User Name field. You may optionally enter in a description if you wish. Click OK when you're done.

If you added the outgoing server in the wizard, you can go ahead and click OK in the Account Settings dialog box. If you had to add the outgoing server here, go back to your account by clicking on the account name on the left and selecting the auth.smtp.vt.edu option from the drop-down list. Then click OK.

Now click the Get Mail button in the toolbar, enter your PID password when asked, and wait for the mailbox to fill up.