How to Do Thunderbird Gmail Configuration for IMAP & POP

 

Thunderbird is a cross platform and open source email client. It supports POP, SMTP & IMAP protocols along with giving enormous functionality for email management, calendar, events etc. to the users.

Mozilla Thunderbird can be configured to work with Google’s Gmail. Users can synchronize Gmail mailbox with Thunderbird by using IMAP. While the data can be downloaded from the Gmail server with POP. Both Thunderbird & Gmail have to be configured at the respective ends in order to complete the synchronization.

How to configure Gmail for Thunderbird?

Gmail can be configured by going to the “Settings” and performing following steps to enable IMAP

1. Sign in with your Gmail account and go to “Settings”.
2. Click “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”.
3. Select “Enable IMAP”.
4. If you wish to configure Gmail account in Thunderbird using POP, then choose “Enable POP” option.
5. Now “Save” the changes.

Once the Gmail settings are dealt with, it’s time to do the following in Mozilla Thunderbird.

• Launch the Thunderbird application
• Select File > New > Existing mail account. It opens the mail account setup which is shown below:

• Fill the account information and password, and hit the “Continue” button.
• Select IMAP or POP as per your requirement and click on the “Done” button.

• If prompted by the Gmail account validation, verify your credentials again. After doing this, Thunderbird will automatically configure your Gmail account and download the messages in the Inbox folder which ensures your Gmail account is ready to use in Thunderbird.

Note: The above method describes the automatic Gmail configuration in Thunderbird. However the user can customize and perform manual account configuration as well.

How to manually configure Gmail account in Thunderbird?

In some older version of Thunderbird, the automatic configuration of Gmail doesn’t work well. Hence it is better to perform manual account configuration if automatic mode doesn’t work. During the defined steps given in the above section, fill the details for the following departments:

1. Incoming mail server and port (for example, "pop.example.com" and port 110 or "imap.example.com" and port 143)
2. Outgoing mail server (for example, "smtp.example.com" and port 25)
3. Security Authentication (for example, "STARTTLS" or "SSL/TLS")

Note: Do note that the Gmail account can be successfully configured in Outlook in the given manner. However, there is another way to go about this Thunderbird Gmail configuration and that is by using “Manual config” button. It is explained in the below section.

How to Configure Incoming & Outgoing Server in Thunderbird?

For fully manual processing without having Thunderbird to detect the configuration settings, do the following:

• In Thunderbird application, Go to Tools > Account settings which will open a separate Tab showing account information of the configured email accounts.
• Click on “Account actions” and select “Add mail account” and fill the user name and password for that account.
• Now click on “Manual Config” and enter the SMTP, IMAP settings by choosing manual setup configuration otherwise Thunderbird will normally chose default setting.

Incoming server: IMAP

Server hostname: imap.gmail.com

Port: 993

Authentication: SSL

OR

Incoming server: POP

Server hostname: pop.gmail.com

Port: 995

Authentication: TLS

Multiple email accounts can use the same SMTP settings, hence unlike POP and IMAP, it remains the same for every Gmail account.

Enter the following details in SMTP server

Outgoing server: SMTP

Server hostname: smtp.gmail.com

Port: 587

Authentication: TLS

After filling the following details, the user can send/receive the emails. Other options can be filled according if required by the user.

Additional Queries Regarding Mozilla Thunderbird:

There are multiple errors related to the incoming and outgoing server settings of Mozilla Thunderbird, If you are having any of these issues, you can take a look at the following topics:

• Sending of Emails is Failing & Timing Out
• Having SMTP Sever Errors in Thunderbird
• Thunderbird is Not Downloading Gmail Messages

Useful Extensions:

• Import Export Tools NG Add on
• Lightning
• Google calendar
• LookOut

Conclusion

The article showcases the steps to configure a Gmail account in Thunderbird using IMAP or POP protocol. It explains the settings for incoming server and outgoing server in detail. Most of these settings remain the same for other email accounts as well. For example, the steps to configure Gmail account in Outlook differs as per the interface, however the configuration settings remain the same.