If you have an account at GMail or Yahoo, it could be nice to have
access to email from those accounts locally in your Thunderbird
client. Through this part I will show you how to access email
accounts from those services.
As luck would have it, Google has already provided a great tutorial for how to setup GMail with Thunderbird so I'll cover how to get Yahoo mail working with Thunderbird. There is also a Webmail extension available (with setup instructions) that supports a number of webmail providers.
The first thing you need to do is download a program that creates a
mail server that sits between Yahoo mail and Thunderbird, called
YPOPs. The installation file (ypops-win-0.7.3.exe) can be found at this page. After it's been downloaded, double-click the file and you should get this screen.
Read through the license, and if it's OK, press next. :)
Next you're asked where to install YPOPs; the default is OK, so just press next.
Here you're asked about where to put the program's shortcuts - the default is OK here as well, so just press next.
On the following screen you're asked whether the installation program should
add a desktop icon - this is handy if you for some reason should need
to start YPOPs manually. Check the box if you want to, and press
next.
Finally you get a confirmation window with your options, if everything is OK, press Install.
At the end of the setup you get this screen, with an option to start YPOPs immediately. Check the box and press finish.
On YPOPs you can configure how it should run on your local
computer. Changing the default settings here is a good idea, as
virus scanners may interfere with the application when it's running with its default settings. So change
the POP3 port to 111 instead of 110, and SMTP port to 26 instead of
25. Press OK and restart your computer or restart YPOPs for the
changes to take effect.
Finally we have to setup an account in Thunderbird that will access
YPOPs running on your computer. Go to Edit > Account
settings... and select Add account... - you should get the following
window.
Select "Email account" and press next.
Here you enter the name associated with the Yahoo account, as well as the email address. Press Next.
In this window you enter settings for the type of account and where
it is accessed - select POP as the type, and use the incoming server
'localhost'. You might also be asked for an outgoing server
here, if so, also enter 'localhost' in that box. Press next.
Here you are asked for the username of your Yahoo account. Enter it and press next.
Finally you're asked for the account name - the email address will do just fine here. Press next.
Check that everything is OK and press Finish. :)
Now, since we're running YPOPs on a non-standard port, we need to
tell Thunderbird to connect to port 111 instead of 110, as it usually
does. Enter 111 in the port box, and press OK. If you're
also using localhost as the SMTP server, go to Outgoing server and
enter port 26 there.
Now, after all this hard work, we can go to local folders and click
on "Get mail". You'll be asked for your Yahoo accounts'
password; enter it and
voila! There's your email.
Enjoy. :)