Outlook and Thunderbird:

I needed access to my E-mail from my failed laptop hard drive, and Thunderbird could import from Outlook, so I thought I was good to go.

Well, if you have ever needed to recover outlook messages you will know that you can't if you don't have Outlook. Even Outlook Express needs Outlook's MAPI files to access the address book and e-mail folders under Outlook. Thunderbird complained there was no Outlook on my machine to import from. So I was stuck, kind of. I needed access to Outlook, but I didn't have a license on the running machine.

So I bent the rules. I installed Outlook on my new desktop, created my profile, and then attached the old pst files via: File - Data File Management. Outlook gives you 50 starts without registration so you don't have to worry about that nightmare. Once attached Thunderbird was able to import the contents of my address book, and all mail folder fine. Woohoo !

Now all that was left was to remove Outlook from my machine.

I started using Thunderbird, and frankly liked the interface, options and controls. But I got a call from a client and suddenly I needed to make an appointment in my calendar.....

But there was not a calendar. So I hit mozilla.org and started looking around. Boy they have a bunch of cool extensions. But no obvious calendar. The have all the calendar stuff here. You need to download the calendar code for Thunderbird and then include it using the Tools – Extensions menu. Then add it to the tool bar so it is handy ( View Toolbar – Customize )

So I'm off and running, Thunderbird as default mail client, and Calendar for my schedule and To Do lists.

Till next time:
Sean Riley
President, DogRiley