Manage inbound-only accounts

[phaolo]

Hello,
I have various (IMAP and POP) accounts in Thunderbird, but I need to send emails only from a few.

For such inbound-only accounts, is there a way (even with addons) to:

1- disable their SMTP, but keep the connection info?
As a temporary workaround I modified the server address with errors, but that isn't an ideal solution.

2- remove them from the "From" list during composition.
They ALL show up there, even after deleting their SMTP.. it's quite annoying having to look for the correct ones every time.

Thanks

[mgagnonlv]

First a bit of a warning: I have not used such a function myself except for this demo, so I don't know how "enjoyable" it is..


TWO SOLUTIONS

Say "account01" is one of the two you want to use both ways and "account10" is a read-only account...

1. First of all, if one of your read-write accounts is a google account – whether it's @gmail.com or via a custom domain hosted via G-suite (Google at work – ex.: me@mydomain.com), Google automatically replaces the user info that you sent by the one of your account.
So if Account01 is a Google account, all you have to do is to configure Account10 to use Account01 as its outgoing server.
– Open Account parameters for Account10
– In the first screen, under "Outgoing server (SMTP), select the outgoing server for account01.

Then, when you either write a new message using account10 or reply to a message received in Account10, it will go through the SMTP server identified in Account01 (Google) and Google will substitute your Google credentials for account01. Therefore your correspondent will see your message as coming from account01 (FirstName LastName – me@gmailDOtCom).

This trick only works for Google. It would also work for other servers that replace the user name and id while sending, but I'm not aware of others that do the same. If Account01 is through another server, you'll have to use tricks 2 or 3, depending on what you want to accomplish.


2.If your Account01 is not a Google-based account, you'll have to change your identity within Thunderbird. So it is a bit more complex than above, but still quite easy to do.
In fact it is possible to use the built-in Identity Manager to hide "account10@something.com" so that your correspondents will never see it and so that all further correspondence is done through Account01.
– Open Account parameters for Account10
– In the first screen, click on "Manage Identities". A pop-up window will open.
– Click on "Add" to create a new identity.
– Then enter in the first panel your name, email address, organization and signature as they are configured for Account01. Also change the outgoing server for Account01.
– If you want, you may decide (in the 2nd and 3rd tabs) to archive messages in other places than the default. For example, you might want to move messages into "Inbox" and "Sent" of account01 rather than account10.
– Click OK to save this new identity, then click on "Make default".
– Still in that Identity window, delete the identity for account10 (i.e. only keep the new default).

That way, messages and replies that you write using Account10 will appear to your correspondents as being sent from "FirstName01 LastName01, Account01". And because you have written in that identity the email address of Account01, that's the only address your correspondents will see and when they reply to you, that follow-up mail will be sent to Account01.

[phaolo]

Thank you for the reply, even if those solutions are limited and very inconvenient.
It's absurd that in all these years such 2 simple features have never been implemented in the base program.

Btw:
- did you forget trick n3?
- also, what about my question n2?
- you should never use binary naming in common examples

[tanstaafl]

The Folder Account extension lets you associate user accounts and identities with specific folders. You could configure the inbox (and any other folders you care about) of the accounts you want to cripple to use the identity of another account when composing a message. i.e if you have accounts A,B, and C you could configure the inbox of accounts A and B to default to the From: address of C when you compose a message.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunde ... src=search

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Multiple_iden ... il_account might give you ideas for some other solutions. Don't forget that you can configure accounts A and B to to use a "reply-to" address of account C as an additional precaution.

[phaolo]

The Folder Account extension

Thank you, but.. Folder Account is reported as incompatible since TB 31 and users say that it doesn't work anymore.

[tanstaafl]

I just installed it in TB 52.3.0. The comments seem to complain that the settings now effect all folders in an account (rather than letting you tweak it per folder). I don't have time to test that right now, but if that is its new behavior, it would still do what you want.

[mgagnonlv]

Thank you for the reply, even if those solutions are limited and very inconvenient.
It's absurd that in all these years such 2 simple features have never been implemented in the base program.

Btw:
- did you forget trick n3?
- also, what about my question n2?
- you should never use binary naming in common examples

Hello,

Not sure what you call "trick n3"... but here is a follow-up on my earlier message

About your question 2. No, it would not remove these read-only accounts from your huge list accounts appearing in the From list during composition. However, it would limit errors – or even the need to open the pull-down menu – because whether "From Account01" or "From Account10" is automatically selected, mail will go out using account01.

As for the procedure I had recommended, it seems a bit lengthy, but it is not overly complex. And you only have to do it once for each read-only email account. Once you have reconfigured all your read-only accounts in a similar fashion, you will never send mail using these read-only accounts.

Apart from not shortening the "From" menu, the only drawback I see from my approach is if you want to reply to some messages that have arrived in account10 using account01, but want to reply to other messages that have arrived in the same account10 by using account03. Then you will have to do so manually via the long "From" menu.

I'm aware it's not a perfect solution.