TB needs VIP feature

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robt77burke
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Joined: October 11th, 2018, 8:41 am

TB needs VIP feature

Post by robt77burke »

I recently started using another email app on my phone and it has a feature that TB really needs to incorporate: The ability to designate individual contacts as VIPs.

I have a few business contacts whose emails are very important. Between my 1) obsessively cleaning out my inbox (and accidentally deleting important stuff) and 2) my business contacts' sporadic correspondence, very often I can't find what I need.

Yes, I know that once I receive an important email, I simply have to click the Yellow Star, but if certain contacts were labeled VIP, from the moment they arrived, they would be prioritized, could have a customized unique notification sound, could be harder to accidentally delete, etc.

I have looked into Add-ons, but nothing I have seen mentions VIP in their limited descriptions, and I don't have the time to research how to install them anyway. (I downloaded a couple highly-rated Contact add-ons, but evidently do not have the right app on my PC to install them.)

It shouldn't be this hard for a pretty basic feature that another app on my phone has. I love Mozilla's policies, and have been happy with its performance to now; Can you make the VIP option happen?
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LIMPET235
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Re: TB needs VIP feature

Post by LIMPET235 »

Hi,
To install an extension into Thunderbird, right click the download link & save the .xpi file to somewhere you can find it.
Desktop is good.
Open the Addons Manager in Thunderbird & drag 'n' drop the .xpi file into it.
Close & re-open Thunderbird to complete the operation.



Moving this to Thunderbird Support...
[Ancient Amateur Astronomer.]
Win-10-H/64 bit/500G SSD/16 Gig Ram/450Watt PSU/350WattUPS/Firefox-115.0.2/T-bird-115.3.2./SnagIt-v10.0.1/MWP-7.12.125.

(Always choose the "Custom" Install.)
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DanRaisch
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Re: TB needs VIP feature

Post by DanRaisch »

You could create a message filter to add a Star to messages from those specific VIP senders and/or set a particular tag which could change the color of the subject text as it is displayed in the message list.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Filters_%28Thunderbird%29
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tanstaafl
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Re: TB needs VIP feature

Post by tanstaafl »

Another solution would be to create a dedicated address book that has just the contacts of all of the VIPs, create a dedicated folder for mail from VIPs, and then create a message filter that tests whether "From" "is in my address book" "VIP address book" with action "move message to -> VIP folder".

If you don't want to move the messages to another folder you could create a saved search folder (aka virtual folder) with the same search criteria per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Saved_Search instead. Despite the misleading name the contents of the folder are updated every time you open it.

The only thing this doesn't do is automatically identify what contacts are VIPs. That really can't be automated since its a value judgement.

If you have so many VIPs that you need to separate them into related groups see the QuickFolders (Tabbed Folders) add-on at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... ostpopular

FYI this forum is not run by or formally associated with Mozilla. We're an independent user-helping-user community. The developers typically don't read threads in either our forums or the official forum (another user-helping-user community).
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tanstaafl
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Re: TB needs VIP feature

Post by tanstaafl »

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Message_Filte ... rnal_links for a list of message filter related add-ons.

The new mail attention add-on at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... attention/ can be used to call attention to the main window on new message arrival. The tonequilla add-on at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... onequilla/ can be used to play a specific .wav file.

If you use a dedicated folder for the VIP mail see the mailbox alert add-on at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... src=search . It can be used "to specify, for each seperate mail folder, a message, sound and/or a system command that will be executed when new mail is found there"
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tanstaafl
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Re: TB needs VIP feature

Post by tanstaafl »

"obsessively cleaning out my inbox (and accidentally deleting important stuff)"

A long time ago Thunderbird would not delete any messages that had a star. Unfortunately they removed that feature. The prevent delete add-on at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... te/?src=ss supposedly stopped working with version 31.5.0 , and is no longer maintained. The No Delete add-on at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... te/?src=ss states :"Prevents to delete messages from your disk. Note that it's OK to move mail into trash folder itself." That is not what I would expect for "no delete".
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