Composing and Sending a Message

To create a new email message, click the New Message toolbar button (the blue pen and paper button). This displays the Compose New Message window, where you can address and compose your message.

In the compose window, you should first address your message. You can enter either a complete email address or a name from your address book. If you want to CC (courtesy copy) or BCC (blind courtesy copy) the message to another recipient, click the down arrow to the left of To in the address field section.

After the addressing is done, begin by typing the message in the message area. After composing the new message, you can send the message by simply clicking the Send button in the message's Compose window toolbar.

One useful trick that allows you to compose a message from the Thunderbird desktop icon is right-clicking the Thunderbird icon and selecting Compose Message from the pop-up menu. This is accomplished using a Registry change. The items you must change in the Registry and a description of this process can be found at http://collingrady.com/2004/12/12/thunderbird-static-desktop-icon/.

When you compose a message, Thunderbird automatically saves a draft of the message using the Auto Save feature. To enable (or disable) the Auto Save feature, open Thunderbird's options dialog box (select Tools, Options in the Thunderbird menu). Click the Composition button at the top of the Options dialog box, and then click the General tab if it is not already active. You can then check (or uncheck) Auto Save Every and set the auto save interval. The default interval is 5 minutes, but I set mine at 2 minutes.

Tip

Thunderbird's automatic spelling checker can be turned off. Select Tools, Options and click the Composition button at the top of the Options dialog box. Then click the Spelling tab to get to the spelling options. Once there, check the first option, Check Spelling Before Sending, to tell Thunderbird to always spell-check your message before it is sent.