School of Informatics and Computing

Please note that, by default, all new CS accounts are configured so that your CS email is automatically forwarded to your @indiana.edu email address so you will not have email delivered on the CS mail server. Please see the associated FAQ for information about email forwarding on the CS systems and information on how to have your @cs.indiana.edu email delivered locally on the CS mail server.

Mozilla Thunderbird is a popular cross-platform mail client that is freely downloadable and is installed on all the CS systems. You can configure Thunderbird as follows:

1. Start thunderbird. If this is the first time you have run thunderbird it may ask about importing information from another application or want to guide you through the setup of your email. You should just cancel both operations. The rest of these instructions assume you did not let thunderbird try and set up the account using this initial configuration option.

2. From the Edit menu, select "Account Settings..."

3. Click the "Add Account..." button.

4. Select "Email account" as the type of account to create and click Next.

5. Enter your name and email address (username@cs.indiana.edu) and click Next.

6. Select IMAP as the type of incoming server and enter mail.cs.indiana.edu as the name of your mail server.

7. If this is the first mail account you have configured, you will have to set up an outgoing mail server. If you are setting this up on a CS system, just enter mail.cs.indiana.edu as the outgoing server and click Next. If you are setting this up on a non-CS system (such as your laptop or home system) then you will either want to use the outgoing mail server provided by your ISP or you can use the CS mail server per the associated FAQ.

8. Enter your username for the "Incoming User Name" and click Next.

9. Enter the desired account name and click Next.

10. Click Finish.

11. From the Account Settings window, which should still be displayed, click on "Server Settings" for the account (which should be listed under the account name on the left side of the window).

12. Under Server Settings, check the box "Use secure connection (SSL)".

13. Click on the Advanced settings button and on this page you should have 1) the IMAP server directory should be empty and 2) the "Server supports folders that contains sub-folders and messages" should be unchecked. The rest of these setting can be left as their defaults. Click OK to leave the advanced account settings page.

14. You can configure other options if you like. When you are done just click OK.

At this point, the configuration of thunderbird is complete. Just click on 'Inbox' under the account you created to read your email. The first time you do this you will get a warning about being unable to verify the identity of your mail server. This is normal so just click "Accept this certificate permanently" and click OK. It will then prompt you for your account password so you can login.

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