Welcome Back Thunderbird

Last year I got a Motorola Q phone. I love the ability to carry around my contacts and calendar wherever I go. Plus, it all ties into my email client which is something I use daily anyway. The problem is that I was stuck with having to use Microsoft Outlook.

I can’t stand Outlook. I think it uses too many resources. I can’t view the source code of my emails without a hack. Certain attachments come in-line of the email rather than attached to it. At least with Mozilla Thunderbird, I can  tune these issues with greater precision. Only, I can’t synchronize all this data with my phone…. or at least I couldn’t.

The magic formula for syncing those fancy phones out there with Thunderbird is as follows:

• Assuming you are starting with an Outlook setup, download and install Thunderbird.
• While downloading, clean up your Outlook folders. Delete old emails, tidy up your sent folder, etc.
• Now that Thunderbird is installed, get the wizard going (or find this in Tools) and import your existing contacts and emails from Outlook. Now, this is going to take a while… a really long while. I don’t know why, but it will take 20 minutes to 1 hour to convert your Outlook emails and import them into Thunderbird. If you don’t care about your old emails, then you’re lucky and can skip this step.
• Since you’ve been synchronizing your phone with Outlook, all your contacts and everything are there and don’t need to be converted.
• As for your email accounts, you can import them, but I prefer to set them up manually so I know the settings are just right.
• Now, to make the magic of syncing work, download and install BirdieSync. This program will allow you to use MS Active Sync to get all your data matched up between your phone and computer.
• This will also install an extension in Thunderbird which will assist in the sync process. Note that there will be a lot of pluging and unpluging of your phone during this process because each step needs to have your phone reconnected to Active Sync. (hey, this is an outline and not another For Dummies Book)
• But what about the calendar program? Well, you have two choices for Thunderbird. There is Sunbird which is a stand-alone calendar program. But since I like using Thunderbird, I will install Lightning which integrates with Thunderbird as an extension.
• With all that set, you can now sync up and be happy.

Well, the happy part will perhaps be detailed more in another post. Especially if this turns out to have all been for naught.