WARNING: The Office of Information Technology supports only the configuration of Mozilla Thunderbird for the specific purpose of connecting to our servers. For problems or questions concerning its use, please consult the application's Help menu or the Thunderbird Help web site. You should also try MozillaZine's Thunderbird forums.

Thunderbird is an application for e-mail and newsgroups from the Mozilla Foundation. The instructions below will help you configure the program for Georgia Tech's My GaTech e-mail system.

1. If you are running Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups or Thunderbird for the first time, you will be taken to the Account Wizard automatically. If not, you can manually launch the wizard from the menu.
   • Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups: Edit > Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings...
   • Thunderbird: Tools > Account Settings...

   From there, click Add Account...

2. On the first screen, choose E-mail account.
   

3. Enter your name and e-mail address.
   

4. Set the type of server to IMAP. The incoming server should be "mail.gatech.edu" and the outgoing server should be "mail.gatech.edu".
   

5. Enter your GT Account username in both the incoming and outgoing boxes.
   

6. Enter the name of your choosing for this mail account. In this example, we use "My GaTech".
   

7. On the last screen, click "Finish".
    
8. You will now need to change a couple of settings before you will be able to connect. You can get to the settings via the menu.
   • Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups: Edit > Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings...
   • Thunderbird: Tools > Account Settings...
      
9. Choose "Server Settings" under the My GaTech account on the left. Change the settings to match the image below.
   

10. This step is optional, but recommended. Choose Composition & Addressing under the My GaTech account. Uncheck the box labelled "Compose messages in HTML format".
    

11. Choose Outgoing Server (SMTP) on the left. Check the box labelled "Use name and password". Change the setting under Use secure connection to "SSL". NOTE: In older versions, this setting is labelled "Always".
    
    NOTE: Some ISPs do not allow connections to computers outside of their network on port 25. See the trouble-shooting information below for possible alternatives.
     
12. Click "OK".

Trouble sending mail

The following combinations of settings are known to work for sending mail. If the default shown above is not working, try one of the others.