Thunderbird 3 installation on Ubuntu 10.04

Hmm, my evening slowed down a bit when I downloaded Thunderbird 3, extracted it and didn’t really know what to do with the resulting files!

Turns out the answer is don’t be scared, just double click the file that says ‘thunderbird’ with no extension, and it starts up. Naturally, it starts asking you for a new account settings etc but I have all that info in the thunderbird profile I am now careful to store in my documents so that I can back my emails up periodically. Just quit out of this and perform a quick web search to remember the solution.

You have to cd to the programme folder (in my case, it’s still on the Desktop) and type ./thunderbird -profilemanager
These magic words open a little dialogue box. You want to create a new profile. Call it something obvious. I called mine ‘Dan’. Then click ‘Choose Folder’ and navigate to where you know your profile folder is (if you don’t, back up and look for this by consulting here). I was cautious and backed this folder up before I started. I recommend you do the same, although nothing went wrong with what I did, you can never backup enough.

That’s it really, clicking ok starts Thunderbird with this profile and next time, Thunderbird will open with this profile already selected.

On to mounting the windows partition at startup now before Soph comes back!

This entry was posted in Diary. Bookmark the permalink.