Upgrading from Thunderbird 2.0 to 3.1

cormie

Hi,
I've been using Thunderbird since 2005

I haven't had any need to change it since I first got it but today for some reason I just did a quick "Thunderbird" google and some of the new features for 3.1 are quite appealing like tabbed emails and better search filter.

I also note there is an "archive" feature and it also says something about plugins not working and some add ons possibly not working either.

I have 4 email accounts set up with Thunderbird, 1 eircom account and then 3 @mydomain ones via blacknight. I already had my own "archive system" I simply had a folder called "read and replied" added to every inbox I had. When I've dealt with an email, it goes straight in here. I like to keep my inbox empty at all times, if there is a mail in my inbox, it means I've something to do. On some email accounts I have more than the "read and replied" folder.

So my first question is, will the archive system replace the "read and replied" folder and can each email account have it's own archive system? I don't want all the mails going into one archive. Will the archive system have any advantage over general searching within the "read and replied" folder?

Second question is with regards the add ons, the primary ones I use are Quicktext (allows me to have templates instantly added to an email - extremely important!), Minimise to Tray (gets thunderbird out of the taskbar and sticks it in the system tray only, I don't like clutter so this is also important) and lastly British English Dictionary (spelling mistakes do happen! ).

So with all this in mind, can I expect a seamless upgrade process or may I run into problems? I've about 28,000 individual mails between all 4 accounts (vast majority being in spam folder!), but I also have important mails and a few GB of mail attachments that I want to keep intact as they are now.

If anyone has had the same worries and gone through the upgrade, please share your experience.

If upgrading will cause any problems whatsoever, I think I can do without the extra features of 3.1

Any feedback appreciated!

bhickey

You should be fine. Just make sure that you backup each of your 4 e-mail accounts first and make a note of where they were located. Even if it all goes pear-shaped (which I doubt) you can still get things back to the way they were.

Adyx

I'm open to correction but I don't think Minimize to Tray will work. I used to use it too but when I updated to Thunderbird 3, a compatible version wasn't released.

Edit: The original Minimize to Tray wont work but there seems to be several remakes of it if you search the Thunderbird add-ons site.

gnolan

MinimizeToTray Plus 1.0.8 will work Thunderbird 3.x

cormie

Thanks for the replies have any of you had the same concerns when upgrading as I have above? What about the archive feature and how will that work with my "read and replied" folders? Does each mail account have a separate "archive"?

bhickey

cormie wrote: »

Thanks for the replies have any of you had the same concerns when upgrading as I have above? What about the archive feature and how will that work with my "read and replied" folders? Does each mail account have a separate "archive"?

I'e upgraded Thunderbird so many times I've lost count and I've never had a problem with data.

You can use archiving any way you want or not at all.

cormie

Jaysus, just about got thunderbird back to the way it was after upgrading, maybe 1 and a half hours later

First off, I installed 3.1, there was nothing mentioned about uninstalling 2 and I wouldn't have thought this wise incase it disturbed my accounts and settings so I just left it as it was. I went for the custom option so unticked install desktop icon etc and went with the default path of C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird

Installed, quick launch icon seemed to be replaced so I went to launch it and nothing... Restarted, nothing... got scared of course so quickly went to google and after trying a few different things, eventually found a suggestion that changing from C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird to something else (I chose C:\Program Files\Thunderbird) might fix it... it did thankfully and then it started and began to automatically set things up.

It hung on the set up then after it said "finished checking compatibility with minimisetotray" or something like that and I eventually had to click cancel, opened it up manually again then and went to the add ons where I saw nothing I had was compatible. I tried the "check for updates" thingy and the hang up seemed to be when it was checking for updates on a "myphoneexplorer" extension I had. I didn't need this anymore so uninstalled it and it seemed to check the rest fine after that (I guess that's what the hang up was when I first launched it after checking minimisetotray).

The next most important thing was quicktext, installed a version, no sign of it, had to install another version and thankfully all my templates were still there. Then onto minisetotray which now works too.

Now I don't really like the idea of having C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird and C:\Program Files\Thunderbird in my program file folder, in fact, I'd prefer if it ran off C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird and I could just delete C:\Program Files\Thunderbird. I'm not sure what the best step to take here is. If I uninstall what will happen, or should I just delete C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird, or is there any way to get C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird working so I can just delete C:\Program Files\Thunderbird ?

Secondly, a bit disappointed, the tabbed mail feature was a big part of upgrading and I've only just discovered that new reply windows open in a new window altogether and aren't tabbed within the thunderbird program itself. Seems this has been requested for over a year from forums etc but still not implemented so probably won't be any time soon either.

It also said on upgrading from 2 to 3, that the server will set to automatically delete mail after 14 days. Mine were all set to what I had them set to previously, although it does have this under the heading "when creating new pop3 account", whereas I thought it was going to change all my settings to 14 days, but it didn't

I just hope everything else is going to be ok, I can't help be a bit worried since it didn't go smooth.:o

cormie

Also, a little bug with minizetotray, both in firefox and thunderbird seems to be sometimes when you restore each program, they aren't maximised which is a tad annoying