Thunderbird is a very powerful free e-mail client found at Mozilla.org. You will find it to be very easy to use, but not always intuitive. One of the questions I’ve been asked several times is with respect to setting up mailing lists in Thunderbird. This is actually very easy to do.
Mailing lists can be very handy for mailing messages to any group of people, whether it be a group of friends, family members or a number of people at the same company.
To set up a mailing list, follow these simple instructions.
- Open Mozilla Thunderbird.
- Under the Tools menu at the top, click on Address Book.
- When the Address Book opens, click the New List button near the top. The Mailing List window will open.
- Enter a name for your list next to List Name.
- Enter the e-mail addresses for your list in the box below. Enter one address per line.
- When you are done, click OK to save your list.
Your mailing list will appear in your address book along with your other e-mail contacts. A mailing list is selected in the same manner as any other entry in your address book.
When you select a mailing list to send a message to, only the name of the mailing list will appear in the To window in your Thunderbird screen, but keep in mind that anyone receiving the message will see the entire list. If you do not want recipients to see the list, you can select your own e-mail address as the To recipient and select Bcc (blind carbon copy) from the drop-down list on the next recipient line. Type in the first few letters of the name you used for your mailing list and Thunderbird will insert that name in the Bcc field.
To select a mailing list for editing, simply open the Address Book, right-click on the name of the mailing list and select Properties. Pretty simple stuff. 😀