Hopefully, at this point you will have Thunderbird up and running. As the next step in the process you will need to get familiar with the program. This part will evolve around basic buttons/options and how to read mail.
The get mail button will connect your Thunderbird client to your mail server and look for new messages. In the bottom right corner you will get a message if you have new email.
The write button opens a new window, where you can compose a new email message, add attachments
and finally send it.
Pressing the address book button will also open a new window, you will now be able to see which mail address you currently got, you can also add new cards, send a message to someone who is in your address book, I will elaborate on the address book in part 4.
The reply button will open and new window, including the text from the mail highlighted in your inbox.
Will include all recipients of the email replied to, i.e. everybody listed in the To or Copy field will receive the reply.
The forward button opens a new window, with the highlighted message either as an attachment, or inlined (included as text) in the new message.
The delete button will delete the highlighted mail message, if you're a fan of the keyboard the delete button has the same function.
The junk button will mark the highlighted message as junk (AKA spam).
The print button will print the highlighted message.
The stop button will abort the current action, useful for example if you want to abort sending a big message, or stop downloading thousands of messages from newsgroups.
Having Thunderbird up and idle, you need to press the Get mail button to make the client check for new messages, unless Thunderbird is configured to check for messages automatically (it is possible to configure this under Tools -> Account settings).