Why I love Thunderbird

I was sitting with a colleague last week when an email arrived. Looking at the email I told him it was from Lebanon, and the same guy had sent us a similar email 2 months back. He was impressed.

There was no country mentioned in the email, and there was no alluding to the previous email. But I could tell, because I had the country lookup and Gmail conversational view plug ins installed in my Thunderbird.

It’s not uncommon for others to be surprised at the speed I can search though thousands of emails I have in my system using Thunderbird or tell them otherwise not so obvious details of the emails.

These kind of things are very much alien to outlook users. Outlook is great too, but I rather advocate Thunderbird. I hope this small article will help people decide for the email client they want.

1. Search Options in Thunderbird.

It has so many search options that you will be overwhelmed. The only program I have seen with better search options is Eudora.

For example I could search in Eudora for emails that

– Have receipt’s email ending with .lb
– Date between 2nd Jan and 3rd Feb
– Subject Containing Profile
– With attachements

ThunderBird Advanced Search Options
ThunderBird Advanced Search Options- Click to see Full size

2. Quick filters and Quick search.

Quick filters and quick searches do just that. Help you search quickly or filter the messages quickly. Both work like charm in realtime. You start typing in the quickseach and it autofills with the emails matching the pattern. The email search is very impressive.

3. Free Plugins

There are thousands of free plugins available for thunderbird. Look for the list of my favorite thunderbird plugins in my upcoming blog. There are plugins available to do everything from your email client.

Thunderbird Quick Search
ThunderBird Quick Search- Pattern Matching "Sale"

4. Undelete – Even those gone from Trash box.

Stephen Parker mentions in his blog how to restore emails that you deleted even from your trash box. Looks like Thunderbird never actually deletes the emails, it just hides them. The emails can be restored by opening your mailbox file into any standard text editor.

5. It’s free.

All this makes Thunderbird an excellent choice for anyone who wants to stay on top of his email messages.

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