University of Southern California

ITS Information Technology Services

A division of the Office of the Chief Information Officer

Setting Up Thunderbird for Use with Google Apps at USC (Mac)


This page provides instructions for configuring Thunderbird for the Macintosh to use with your Google Apps at USC email account.

Requirements

You will need to enable IMAP or POP access on your Google Apps at USC email account in order to check your email through Thunderbird. ITS strongly recommends using the IMAP protocol and provides configuration documentation for that protocol only. See the IMAP and POP Comparison page for more information.

Setting Up IMAP Access

  1. Go to google.usc.edu and click Gmail.
  2. Click Settings at the top the Gmail page.
  3. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
  4. Choose Enable IMAP in the IMAP Access section.
  5. Click Save Changes.

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.

    tbrid3mac_1.png

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

    tbirdmac3_addmail.png

  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 Google Apps at USC password in the Password field and click Continue.

    Yourname.png



    Thunderbird will then attempt to automatically look up and adjust your settings as needed. Click Stop in the Editing Config section of the window to manually enter the configuration for your Google Apps at USC Account.

    Entering Thunderbird Settings Manually

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

    1. In the Username field, enter your full USC email address, i.e. ttrojan@usc.edu.
    2. In the Incoming field, type imap.gmail.com.
    3. In the Outgoing field, type smtp.gmail.com.
    4. From the pulldown menu next to Incoming, choose IMAP.
    5. In the next field, enter 993 for the incoming email port number.
    6. In the field directly below this, enter 465 for the outgoing email port number.
    7. Make sure both of the pulldown menus next to the port numbers are set to SSL/TLS.
    8. Click Re-test Configuration.

    tbird3_gapps1.png

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

    tbird3_gapps_2.png

    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.

    If you have any questions or need assistance configuring Thunderbird, please contact the ITS Customer Support Center at 213-740-5555 or email consult@usc.edu.

    Last updated:
    May 24, 2011

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Setting Up Email with Google Apps

The use of all USC computing resources is governed by the USC Computing Policies.