Mozilla Thunderbird is a free mail client from Mozilla, which is considered as a viable alternative to MS Outlook. In this post I will tell you how to configure a Gmail account in Mozilla Thunderbird to backup and manage your emails using Thunderbird email client. The following instructions can be used to configure your Gmail account in not just Mozilla Thunderbird 5 but all other versions as well.
After launching Thunderbird for the first time, a wizard open to allow configuring a mail account, In case you wish to launch the wizard manually, go to Tools –> Account Settings –> Account Actions –> Add Mail Account. To get started, enter you name, Gmail account username and password. Hit Continue to proceed further.
After that, leave the settings to IMAP and click Create Account.
In the final step, you can optionally enable Newsgroups for receiving news updates, Click OK to continue.
This will enable you to use Gmail from your Thunderbird mail client. A copy off all mails from your Gmail account will be saved on your hard drive and you will be able to perform all Gmail mail functions from the available options. Furthermore, you can view your saved mails offline and import new mails automatically when connected to the internet.
Mozilla Thunderbird works with
