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New to ThunderbirdPortable (and Thunderbird) and Confused

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baumgrenze
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Joined: 2012-07-12 19:09
New to ThunderbirdPortable (and Thunderbird) and Confused

I am a long-time user of SeaMonkey. I migrated when Netscape Navigator went under. I understand that the SM Mail interface is TB based. I also have vision issues and sometimes miss 'small but significant' options.

I'm having email download problems from my ISP and the response on the SM Mozillazine forum was to try ThunderbirdPortable to see if it could pull in mail.

One responder suggested I download Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition 52.8.0. Somehow I ended up with the more recent version.

D:\My Documents\DownloadsTempMD\ThunderbirdPortable_60.5.2_English.paf.exe
and
D:\My Documents\DownloadsTempMD\ThunderbirdPortable\ThunderbirdPortable.exe

Yes, I missed seeing where the program was to be installed, but found it easily thanks to ZTreeWin.

When I run ThunderbirdPortable.exe I get an error message:

"An error occurred with the POP3 mail server. Mail server imap.sonic.net responded:"
but any further details are not reported.

I began the setup and tried using the default suggested setup parameters (the same as my SM setup) and hit this error message:

Username or password invalid
Configuration could not be verified - is the username or password wrong?

I called Sonic support and the tech could see nothing wrong with my POP3 parameters so we tried an IMAP setup. (My SNIP documentation was less complete at this point, but I do have a couple of screen dumps. The tech suggested shutting down Thunderbird Portable and restarting. I could not find the executable immediately so we broke off.

It took some sleuthing but I found the 'ThunderbirdPortable.exe' but as I report above, it does not work when I run it.

I looked for 'Edit>Preferences' in the ThunderbirdPortable window but I do not find it in the interface that opens, so I cannot confirm the settings it is trying to run.

What should I do next?

thanks,
baumgrenze

Abraxian
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Last seen: 2 weeks 2 days ago
Joined: 2010-08-18 10:40
I would try the following

As you are new to TB and also to PortableApps implementation of TB I would suggest the following:

(1) Read through these two documents so that you get an overview understanding of what a portable app is and about TB Portable in particular:

Angel https://portableapps.com/support/portable_app - This will give details on how to install the PortableApp. You do not need to use the PortableApps Platform for PortableApps. I don't use the Platform myself and all my PortableApps function fine without it.

(b) https://portableapps.com/support/thunderbird_portable - This gives specific details on TB Portable. Which help with clearing up any basic mysteries with it for a new user. Pay very particular attention to the section on that webpage titled Using Thunderbird with Webmail (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc) to make sure that you have TB setup properly before you attempt to download any mail using it.

(2) Once you have an account setup (after a fashion), so that you can at least see the Accounts Pane (to the extreme left-hand side of the TB window, right-click on the name of the account (let's say you called the account TEST) and then select Settings. This will open a window titled Account Settings. You can adjust the manner in which TB will attempt to connect to your email server by clicking on the account title, e.g. TEST, and also by clicking on the Server Settings just below that account title. (I can't help with your POP and IMAPI settings as it's not an area in which I have expertise -- I would think asking your email server folks and/or posting in the TB section of mozillaZine Forums would be the best place to ask. mozillaZine are usually pretty good at helping folks with POP/IMAPI difficulties.)

(3) To access settings regarding your password for your mail server do the following:

Angel If you can't see the TB menus then to the right of any tabs you have open right-click on a blank area of the TB interface and select Menu Bar. Alternatively to temporarily enable the Menu Bar press and hold down the Alt key on your keyboard.

(b) Now that you can see the Menu Bar select Tools > Options > Security > Passwords (tab) -- once there you will be able to view and adjust your password details according to your own preferences.

Hope this is of some help.

P.S. The smilies with wings (what ever they are meant to denote) should be "(a)"'s.

Use Portable Apps on both Flash Drive and HDD/SSD.

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