Please be a "Responsible Forwarder" of emails.

Delete all prior email addresses when you forward . . . including mine.

Always use bcc (blind carbon copy) for recipients of your emails.

Remember that a lot of these people don't, and won't ever, know each other.

Cheers!

Start by opening a blank message by clicking on the 'write' button. Now just create your signature at the top of the message, dont worry about the position, you can type anything you like and even include images or change colors. Changing the font color is a little hidden, but if you mouse over the little black and white squares, they are below the subject line and above the main text area, you will find that the black one will change the font color and the white one will change the background color (not recommended). When you have the signature looking just the way you like, you can then save it. Choose the 'File' menu and look for 'Save As' and in the little bit that pops out select 'File' . I know 'File save as File' sounds pretty dumb but it makes sense in the menus. It will want to save it as a HTML file so you just need to give it a name like 'signature.html' . Also be careful to save the message somewhere that makes sense so you can find it again in a few minutes ie in My Documents. You can now close the message you made the signature on, if it asks do you want to save it, say no.

All we have to do now is make sure it turns up in the messages. So go to the 'Tools" menu and then select 'Account Settings'. This brings up the account settings dialog box. Look towards the bottom of the page and there is a tick box for 'Attach signature from a file instead' then click on the 'Choose' button. Navigate to and select your signature file that we created a few moments ago and your done. Well almost, you should also check the 'Composition and Addressing' section in the left side of the account settings dialog box. Make sure the settings on the left match the following, in the 2 drop down lists select 'start my reply above the quote' and place my signature 'below my reply (above the quote)' also make sure that you tick the boxes for replies and forwards and now you're done. Your signature will appear in every email you send.

Ok the path to the Thunderbird folder we want to backup is:

C:\Users\*Your User Name*\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\

To find him open up my computer, then open up the local disk c, now look for a folder called 'Users' and open it, then open your user account ie mine is called 'Phil' yours will most probably be your name but could be really lame like 'User'. Now look for a folder called 'AppData', once your in there we are nearly home free, now look for the 'Roaming' folder and open him, and in the long list look for the 'Thunderbird' folder, this is the one we need, copy him anywhere you want, but remember to have Thunderbird closed when you do the backup, if Thunderbird is running the computer will complain that it cant copy the files because they are open etc etc.

There is one trick you must perform to get your mail up and running in Linux. Inside .thunderbird, you need to make a file called profiles.ini. Bring up the right-click menu and create a new text file in the folder, and name it profiles.ini. Open up this new text file in your favourite text editor, and paste in the following code:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1
[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=xxxxxxxx.default

Replace the xxxxxxxx with the real name of your profile folder. Save the file and quit, and now launch Thunderbird. Your email should load up as if nothing has happened and all your archives should be up and rolling. Should you run into any problems with folder unread counts being incorrect, you'll have to go through the affected folders, mark items so that the unread count is correct again, then go to the 'File' menu and select 'Compact Folders' to force those changes to save to disk, or the problem will reoccur.