Setting Up Thunderbird (Mac) for USC Email

This document provides information about configuring Thunderbird for Mac OS X to work with your USC email account.

Thunderbird is a full-featured email program that also offers RSS and newsgroup services. For additional information about Thunderbird and ITS services, please visit the Thunderbird website.

Using the Import Wizard

If you have never used Thunderbird before, the Import Wizard will launch the first time you open Thunderbird. If you want to migrate settings or messages from another email client, such as Apple Mail or Entourage, you can do so by selecting appropriate options in the Import Wizard.

1. Double-click the Thunderbird icon to start the application and Import Wizard. The Import Wizard will give you the option to import Address Books, Mail, Settings or all of these items.
2. Select what you want to import and click Next to automatically import your mail, account settings, and address books (if any).
3. Select the program you would like to import from.
4. Once the import is complete, the import wizard will indicate what it has imported.

Setting Up a New Account

1. When you launch Thunderbird 3 for the first time, the Account Wizard might launch automatically. If it does not launch automatically, open the Tools menu and click Account Settings. The Account Settings Window should open.
   

   

2. In the bottom left corner of the Account Settings Window, click the Account Actions drop down menu and choose Add Mail Account.

   

3. In the next screen, enter your name as you want it to appear on outgoing email messages in the Your Name field. Enter your USC email address in the Email Address field and your password in the Password field and click Continue.

   

   
   
   Thunderbird will then attempt to automatically look up and adjust your settings as needed. The Incoming and Outgoing fields will both show green dots.

4. If Thunderbird indicates that it "failed to find the settings for your email account," the settings will have to be manually entered.

Entering Thunderbird Settings Manually

To manually configure Thunderbird for your USC account, enter the following settings on this screen:

1. In both the Incoming Server hostname and Outgoing Server hostname fields, type email.usc.edu.
2. From the pulldown menu next to Incoming, choose IMAP.
3. In the next field, enter 993 for the incoming email port number.
4. In the field directly below this, enter 465 for the outgoing email port number.
5. Make sure both of the pulldown menus next to the port numbers are set to SSL/TLS.
6. Click Re-test Configuration.



7. If green dots show next to both incoming and going, click Create Account

Checking your email

To check for new email, launch Thunderbird and it will ask you for your password (unless you asked Password Manager to remember it). After you type in your password, you should see your new email in your Inbox displayed in bold.

• If you are already running Thunderbird, click the Get Mail button on the toolbar.
• You can also click the File menu, select Get New Messages For and then select the email account you want to check.

Composing and Sending Email

To write and send a message, click the Write button on the tool bar, or select the File menu, select New, and then click Message. Both of these functions will bring up a Compose message window.

1. In the To: field, type the recipient's email address. You can enter multiple addresses by separating each address with a comma.
2. In the Subject: field, type a brief description of your message.
3. After completing the To: and Subject: fields, type your message in the space below. When you are finished, click the Send button.

Getting Help

Thunderbird has online help guides to assist you with its additional features. To find it look under the Help menu or visit the Thunderbird project website at www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird.