Email Services Desktop Email Setting Up
Setting Up

Setting Up

Guide Overview

You can set up your email client to use an address book, to enable spell check, and to create a signature to appear at the bottom of email that you send through this client.

Setting Up an Address Book

Setting Up an Address Book

Use these instructions to the set up your Thunderbird Address Book.

Importing a Text File Address Book Into Thunderbird

  1. Launch Thunderbird, then click the Tools menu and select Import.
  2. Select Address Books, and then click Next.
  3. Select Text file (.LDIF, .tab, .csv, .txt,), and then click Next.
  4. Browse to the location of your address book entries and select the file you wish to import.
  5. Click Finish.

Setting up Thunderbird to use the Harvard Phonebook (LDAP)

Harvard maintains a directory of faculty, staff and students by using a technology called LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol).  To integrate this directory with Thunderbird for easy searching of email addresses, use the following instructions.

  1. Launch Thunderbird, and then click the Address Book icon.
  2. Click the File menu on top of the Address Book window, then click New and select LDAP Directory.
    The Directory Server Properties window appears.
  3. Enter the following information:
    • In the Name field, enter Harvard Phonebook.
    • In the Hostname field, enter phonebook.harvard.edu.
  4. Click the Advanced tab.
  5. You might want to change the maximum number of results to be larger than the default value of 100.
    We recommend changing this to 1000.
  6. Click OK to close the Directory Server Properties window and then close the Address Book window.
Enabling Spell Check

Enabling Spell Check

To enable the automatic spell checking feature in Thunderbird, use the following steps.

  1. Launch Thunderbird.
  2. Click the Tools menu on top, and select Options.
    On a Mac running OSX, click the Thunderbird menu, and then select Preferences.
  3. Click the Composition icon, and then click the Spelling tab.
  4. Click the Check spelling before sending check box.
  5. Click OK.
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Check spelling before sending Check Box
Creating an Email Signature

Creating an Email Signature

Sometimes people end their messages with some details about themselves, such as their postal address, telephone number, and fax number. A file containing this information is called a signature file.

In most cases, you can create a simple HTML file in your My Documents folder to contain your basic contact information. To edit the file, use a plain text editor, such as Mac TextEdit or Windows Notepad. To create a signature file and use it in Thunderbird, use the following steps:

  1. Launch a simple text editing program:
    • In Windows, click the Start menu in the lower left, then click All Programs, select then Accessories, and then choose Notepad.
    • In Mac OS X, double-click your hard drive, and then double-click Applications. Launch the TextEdit program in your Utilities folder.
  2. Inside your text editing program write the details of your signature (for example your title, address, or phone number), and then save your text file in a location where you will be able to find it in later.
  3. Close your text editor, and then launch Thunderbird.
  4. In Thunderbird, click the Tools menu on top, and then select Account Settings.
    The Account Settings window opens.
  5. Click the Choose button on the right side of the Account Settings window, and then navigate to the file you saved in step two.
    Click on the file, and then click Open.
  6. Click OK to close the Account Settings window.
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