Multiple identities

[pangloss]

i umpteenth it. seriously, this would be a nice feature. it's the only "major" thing lacking in my day-to-day use of thunderbird.

[aussieboykie]

While this ever growing band of wannabe multiple personality users is waiting for a feature that will hopefully eventually make it into the mainstream code, is there a kludge available to manually edit the prefs file to do what we want? Specifically, to add email identities to the From: drop down list <b><u>without</u></b> adding associated folders.

Regards, AB

[phun]

user oiv over here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 859#180859

posted this hack a while back. apparently the backend code is setup to support this. I haven't tried this, but I'm about to. I'll post a report if it works.

[phun]

I just tried this and it works great! No gui, but better than nothing.

Thanks to oiv.

[jgsouthard]

user oiv over here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 859#180859

posted this hack a while back. apparently the backend code is setup to support this. I haven't tried this, but I'm about to. I'll post a report if it works.

I haven't tried this, but this would still result in the "account" being visible with its own folder set, wouldn't it? Just another way to enter a new dummy account rather than use the Account Settings menu? I don't see the advantage of this. Can anyone confirm that this results in a HIDDEN account?

What we need at a minimum is a way to hide an account so that it doesn't show up in the folder structure. That way, we can create additional dummy accounts to use for multiple identities. This should be very easy to implement in code.

Even better would be true multiple identities, with the ability to quickly enter a new identity during composing (e.g. one of the "From:" pull down selections is "Create a New Identity"), have Reply identities autoselected based on the "To:" address in the message being replied to, and association of identities to specific accounts and/or folders.

[phun]

that's exactly what this does. It creates hidden accounts for outbound mail only

The only exception to what you mentioned is that it does not autoselect the from address based on the recipient of replies.

I just setup a few of my identities and I'm happily using them without any disruption to my folders and files. It's great! That one feature aboure replying would be the icing though, as would a gui :)

[Kylotan]

Yep, I'm just bumping this to say that I really need separation of accounts and identities too. (Not to mention signatures.) I have numerous email addresses that all go through the same server and I need to be able to easily specify which name and from address to use, and which signature to go with that mail.

[jgsouthard]

I just tried this and it works great! No gui, but better than nothing.

Thanks to oiv.

I finally got a change to try this, and it appears to work OK. Not a good solution, but better than nothing.

It looks like the key line is this one:
user_pref("mail.account.account4.server", "server1")

This sets the "identity" account (in this case, account4 associated with id4) to point to the default server rather than the new server4 and folder structure that would otherwise be associated with this account (change "server1" to whatever server # is your default). By doing so, the folder structure for the new account does not show up in the folder list.

So, it isn't really necessary to manually code pref.js for ALL of the lines for the new identity. Just create a new dummy account in the GUI, then edit pref.js to change the ONE line above, and the folder structure for the dummy account disappears. Any further edits (name, email address, sig, etc.) DO require direct edit to pref.js, however, since the account also disappears from the Account Settings list (bummer).

So you can let the GUI do the initial creation of all of the pref.js lines for the new identity account, then change this one line to repoint the folder list to the default account.

I was also able to make the Local Folders disappear using the same approach. I use IMAP and leave all email on the server, so I didn't really want to see the local folders either.

You can also use the Preferential extension to edit pref.js if you wish. A text editior is just as easy (maybe easier), but Preferential is at least available from within Thunderbird.

Topic for someone else to experiment with, since I currently only use one IMAP email account: Can this approach also be used to have multiple POP email accounts all feed email into ONE Local Folder tree, by resetting all of the POP account 'servers' to the one associated with the Local Folder? It looks like this might work (haven't tried it). If so, this might resolve the other common complaint about being forced to use separate folder trees for each account.

It looks like the hooks are there. Now, if we could just get a simple GUI implementation...

[aussieboykie]

Thanks phun for posting the link to oiv's hack which works and is definitely better than nothing. As was suggested in the referenced thread, this feature could probably be implemented as an extension. Any volunteers?

Cheers, AB

[angelday]

Thunderbird is a great software, but I missed these account identities from the first day I started using it. I'm not an expert of hacking and to be honest this was the first time I tried this thing, but it worked and I thought I'd share my discoveries.

Let's assume you have a POP mail server which handles your email ("ID1"). We need to add three blocks of text into "prefs.js".

1st step
Quit Thunderbird locate and backup the original "prefs.js" file. It can typically be found in "C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\default\BOGUSFOLDERNAME".

2nd step
We need to add an extra account and make it point to the POP server as a "parent". ID1, 2 and 3 was used when I opened the file, so I added "ID4" as the next one. I don't know if you can add these extra lines at the end of the file, I put them right below the similar declarations. (Note that the second line shows that we'll be assigning this identity to our original account.)

Code: Select all

user_pref("mail.account.account4.identities", "id4");
user_pref("mail.account.account4.server", "server1");

3rd step
In this step we will add an extra account to the Account Manager. In this example I added "account4". (Note that this is a modification of an existing line in "prefs.js".)

Code: Select all

user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account2,account3,account4");

4th step
Copy-paste the identity-related material and edit to your liking. COPY_TEXT_FROM_ID1 is a folder name and it looks something like this: "mailbox://user@popservername.tld/appropriate_foldername". You will need to copy this part from the "ID1" POP server setting (our identity's "parent"). (And again I put the code block right below the other similar chunks.)

Code: Select all

user_pref("mail.identity.id4.doBcc", false);
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.draft_folder", "COPY_TEXT_FROM_ID1");
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.drafts_folder_picker_mode", "0");
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.fcc_folder", "COPY_TEXT_FROM_ID1");
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.fcc_folder_picker_mode", "0");
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.fullName", "INSERT_YOUR_NAME_HERE");
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.smtpServer", "smtp1");
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.stationery_folder", "COPY_TEXT_FROM_ID1");
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.tmpl_folder_picker_mode", "0");
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.useremail", "INSERT_YOUR_MAIL_HERE");
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.valid", true);

That's it!
Save and start Thunderbird. It has to list the new identity when you click on the "From:" drop down menu. Your original account name will be written in italic in the same line. Cool, hey?

Thanks oiv http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=180859#180859 for posting the orignal!

[[TOM]]

5th step - optional
Add the PGP/GPG functionallity below the lines from step 4 if you want to use GPG for signing and encryption (sure - eningmail must be installed for this step):

Code: Select all

user_pref("mail.identity.id4.enablePgp", true);
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.pgpAlwaysSign", true);
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.pgpKeyMode", 1);
user_pref("mail.identity.id4.pgpkeyId", "0xC051201E");

Use the key ID (last line) of the Key you want to use with this Identity. Set "pgpAlwaysSign" (second line) to FALSE if you don't want to use signing by default for this identity.

THX for the great tips for managing multiple identities. With this configuration I can switch back to Thunderbird.

[TOM]

[angelday]

Note: since I had made those forementioned changes in "prefs.js" my old ID1 folders (the account I had as the parent for my other identities) got somewhat scrambled up. At the first click on a folder will result in a "Building summary file for [foldername]" status bar message and after some time a lots of messages are displayed in BOLD (unread).

As I figured out the messages aren't dupes (which has been my main concern here), just tagged as unread. Strange, but I still believe in open-source and Scott MacGregor.

Thunderbirds are a go!

[av1998]

Is this feature available yet in Thunderbird 0.4 ? This discussions started in July 2003 ..... it is now January 2004 ..... 6-7 months later ..... what is the status ?

[Old Unghost]

See here - http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 66&start=0