Thunderbird success story

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Thunderbird
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tomdkat
Posts: 1410
Joined: October 14th, 2003, 7:53 am

Thunderbird success story

Post by tomdkat »

So, I helped someone running Windows XP on their laptop resolve an Outlook Express problem by switching them to Thunderbird 38. Their main inbox had reached 2GB in file size and Outlook Express refused to download new messages with file attachments. I did some research and found some ways to compact the inbox and as I attempted to do this, Outlook Express started acting strangely. It would stop responding to the system, could not compact the inbox due to a known bug (I found discussion of this on a Microsoft forum), and it would take forever to load the inbox so I could verify we didn't corrupt the inbox.dbx file.

I installed Thunderbird 38 and everything worked flawlessly. It brought over *everything*, including the mailing lists they had setup in Outlook Express. What's interesting is, after the email was imported, I checked the inbox file in Thunderbird's profile and it was 660MB in file size. So, if we had been able to compact the inbox.dbx file in Outlook Express, he might still be using it.

In any event, I walked him through the basics of Thunderbird use and he seemed comfortable with it. I also installed the "Theme & Font Size Changer" add-on, to make the text and controls larger and easier for him to read.

With the frequent discussion of things that *don't* work with Thunderbird, I wanted to share this "success story". :)

Peace...
wsmwk
Posts: 2833
Joined: December 7th, 2004, 6:52 am
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Re: Thunderbird success story

Post by wsmwk »

Well done!
tomdkat
Posts: 1410
Joined: October 14th, 2003, 7:53 am

Re: Thunderbird success story

Post by tomdkat »

Thanks! This has been a good learning experience for me because I learned a lot about Thunderbird's capabilities. The transition hasn't been perfect, but it's gone a lot smoother than fighting Outlook Express. He knows he's using an outdated, unsupported platform but he's not ready to retire the machine yet. Fortunately, Thunderbird came "to the rescue". :) lol

Peace...
terrathunderbird
Posts: 170
Joined: April 11th, 2012, 10:22 am

Re: Thunderbird success story

Post by terrathunderbird »

Yay! TBird is so good. I have occasional problems, and it's a "hog" on CPU resources, but it's really a godsend in terms of performance. I can search and create my emails WAY faster than on any email program I can remember using.
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