Sometimes Thunderbird makes me scratch my head. Case in point: Thunderbird defaults to checking only your Inbox for new email, and none of the subfolders under the Inbox. To check subfolders, you have to right-click on EACH ONE, go to properties, and turn checking on. That’s silly – this Mozilla article seems to agree with me.
Maybe it’s me. I make heavy use of server-side whitelist filtering on my IMAP server to categorize incoming emails. If I get an email from a friend from Fort Myers, it goes in the Fort Myers folder. I hope I’m not the only one doing this… if so, people, you’ve got to try it. Once you set it up, you’ll be happily in control. Get an important email, and you can read it right away. Another joke email from Aunt Gertrude – well, you’ll get to it when you have time. And with Chatter Email on my Treo, I can assign different ringtones to each folder, instantly telling me if I have an important (RING!) or unimportant (bzz) incoming email.
The other email tool I have to have is spamassassin. It uses Bayesian filtering, and it’s now smart enough to keep spam out of my life. Sigh… what a relief.
Anyway, to make Thunderbird check all your IMAP folders for mail (duh), do this:
Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Config Editor
Start to type [mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new] into the filter box.
Double-click the [mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new] line to change it from false to true.
Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Connection Timeout -> Bump up to 120 seconds (if needed)
Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Show expanded columns in the folder pane (double click to set to true)
Then you can click on "Unread" and/or "Total" in the small column control at the upper right corner of the folder pane.Up up and away.
