Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition Support

Many of the most common issues that arise when using Thunderbird Portable are addressed here. Please read through the various topics to see if any of them address your question. You can also post a note to the Thunderbird Portable Support Forum.

<< Return to Thunderbird Portable

Thunderbird Portable-Specific Issues

• Installing Thunderbird Portable
• Using Thunderbird Portable
• Upgrading Thunderbird Portable
• Adding GPG and Enigmail
• Copying your local Thunderbird settings to Thunderbird Portable
• Running from a CD (Thunderbird Portable Live)
• Using Thunderbird with Webmail (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc)
• Known Issues
• Modifications - A list of the modifications made to Thunderbird in this package
• Additional Recommended Settings - Some additional recommendations to improve performance
• Version History

General Mozilla Thunderbird Issues

• Mozilla Thunderbird Frequently Asked Questions
  • General Questions
    • What is Thunderbird?
    • Why should I use Thunderbird instead of other mail clients?
    • Is Thunderbird free?
  • Migration
    • Can I read and send AOL e-mail using Thunderbird?
    • Can I access my Netscape WebMail or Hotmail accounts through Thunderbird?
    • How do I import e-mail messages from another mail program?
  • Usage
    • How do I customize the toolbar?
    • Does Thunderbird come with a spell checker?
    • Can I use different themes for Thunderbird?
    • Is Thunderbird susceptible to e-mail viruses?
    • How do I use S/MIME, PGP or GnuPG to send and receive signed or encrypted messages?
    • I changed my IMAP password, how do I get rid of a cached password?
    • How can I access/change the Master Password?
• Thunderbird Tips & Tricks
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Mouse Shortcuts

Installing Thunderbird Portable

To install Thunderbird Portable, just download the portable package at the top of the Thunderbird Portable page and then double-click it. Select the location you wish to install to and click OK. A PortableThunderbird directory will be created there and all the necessary files installed. That's all there is to it..

Using Thunderbird Portable

To start up Thunderbird Portable, just double-click PortableThunderbird.exe where you installed Portable Thunderbird on your portable drive. Then, use it just like you would a local copy of Thunderbird. There are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• Stay Safe - When using portable apps, it's always a good idea to practice Safe Portable App-ing.
• Removing Your Drive - When you're done, exit Thunderbird and then wait for the activity light on your removable drive to stop flashing. This may take a minute or more on slow drives or computers. Then select the 'Safely remove [device]' option from the icon in the system tray. If you remove the drive while it is writing, you may lose data.

Upgrading Thunderbird Portable

To upgrade to a newer version of Thunderbird Portable, just install a new copy of Thunderbird Portable right over your old one. All your data will be preserved.

Adding GPG and Engimail

Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition has built-in support for GPG and Enigmail to sign and encrypt your messages. To add GPG to Thunderbird Portable, just download GPG for Thunderbird Portable 1.4.9 (1.8MB download / 4.6MB installed) and install it right over your existing installation. Then download the Enigmail extension and install it into Thunderbird. When you restart Thunderbird Portable, you'll have full access to Enigmail and GPG, all made portable.

Copying Your Local Thunderbird Settings

If you're using a local copy of Thunderbird, you may wish to just copy your local Thunderbird settings right into Thunderbird Portable. Your local Thunderbird profile is usually installed in C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.???\ Just copy all of those files to the Data\profile directory within Thunderbird Portable. Sometimes, certain profiles will cause the launcher to fail or hang. In that case, start from scratch and try just copying your mailstores (Mail and ImapMail directories) as well as your prefs.js and abook.mab files.

Running From a CD (Thunderbird Portable Live)

Thunderbird Portable supports running from a CD right out of the box, and it's a snap. Start off by downloading and installing Thunderbird Portable to your hard drive... it doesn't matter where. Run it at least once to generate the default settings. Then, customize it as needed, being sure not to move ThunderbirdPortable.exe or any of the other critical files. Next, download ThunderbirdPortable.ini and save it to the same directory as ThunderbirdPortable.exe. Then, burn the whole ThunderbirdPortable directory to a CD and you're ready to go.

If you use Thunderbird Portable from a USB flash drive with a write-protect switch, you're covered, too. The Thunderbird Portable Launcher will automatically detect when you protect the drive and offer to run your files locally for you.

Additional information about the options in the INI is provided in the readme.txt file within the ThunderbirdPortable\Other\ThunderbirdPortableSource directory. Please note that you must follow Mozilla's Trademark Distribution Guidelines if you are distributing your customized version to anyone else.

Using Thunderbird with Webmail (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc)

You can use Thunderbird and Thunderbird Portable with many popular webmail providers by using the Webmail Extension. It allows you to connect to Hotmail, Yahoo, Lycos, mail.com, Gmail, Libero and AOL. Details on installing and configuring as well as a support forum are all linked to from their homepage. Just be sure to remember that, like most mail clients, Thunderbird is configured to download and remove your mail from the server by default. If you don't want that to happen, update your account settings after setting up your account (and before checking your email).

Known Issues

The following are known issues with this package:

• Trojan/Virus detected - AntiVir and Avast, on more than one occasion, have claimed there is a trojan or virus in the launcher. This is due to issues with trojan detection that will occasionally mis-identify many NSIS-based applications as trojans. It will usually occur after a definitions update. You should contact your antivitus provider and let them know of their mistake.
• Themes and Extensions - Most themes and extensions should now work with Thunderbird Portable -- including those that make use of the component registry. A handful will still fail, though.

Modifications

I made some modifications to the official version of Thunderbird to make it more USB key friendly (decreasing total install size and the number of writes to the drive, which will increase drive life). These changes are listed here so you'll know what they are, and so you can recreate the process, if so desired.

• Extension-Friendly Launcher - PortableThunderbird Launcher is included by default. It will alter the paths to any extensions you install to work relatively. Just be sure to close/restart Thunderbird before switching PCs.
• Default Profile - A default profile exists within the thunderbird directory.
• No Email Address Saving - Thunderbird won't automatically save addresses to the address book.
• No Default Mail Client Check - Thunderbird won't check if it is the default mail client and the registry key it updates will be reset on exit.

Additional Recommended Settings

• Compact Folders - You may wish to set Thunderbird to notify you when compacting your mail folders would save you space. (When you delete an email in Thunderbird, it still takes up space in the folder on the disc until you compact that folder.) You can find this setting within Tools - Options - Advanced - Offline & Disc Space. Check off the box and enter a value. I recommend 2mb for most people when running portably. You can also right-click a folder and select Compact This Folder anytime you'd like.
• Fetch Headers Only (POP Accounts) - Thunderbird can be set to only download headers from the mail server. This option can be turned on within Account Settings under Server Settings. Though this will make messages take longer to come up, it may decrease the number of writes to the USB drive, increasing drive life.

Version History

• 1.5.0.10 - March 5, 2007
  • Thunderbird updated to 1.5.0.10
  • Slight name change to Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition