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HOWTO Documents > IMAP at CCIS > Configuring Thunderbird to use IMAP at CCIS

This document describes how to configure Thunderbird to use the IMAP services at the Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science. To learn what IMAP is or why you might want to use it, see our general overview of IMAP at CCIS. For more information on how to use Thunderbird with IMAP, please see the Mozilla Thunderbird Help Page.

Configuration Steps

These steps describe how to configure Microsoft Windows XP to use Thunderbird (Note: This will probably work in other versions of Windows as well but I can't confirm that).

1.	Start Thunderbird.
2.	Choose Account Settings under the Tools menu.
3.	Click the Add Account button at the bottom of the left side of the settings window. Select Email Account and hit [next].
	Set the following options: • Your Name: Your name as you would like it to appear on outgoing mail • Email Address: username@ccs.neu.edu Hit [next]. • Set the type of incoming server to IMAP • Set the name of the Incoming Server as imap.ccs.neu.edu Hit [next]. • Set the Incoming User Name to your CCIS username and hit [next]. • Set your Account Name to your CCIS email address and hit [next]. • Click [Finish] to Continue.
4.	On the Server Settings item underneath the account name in the left menu, set the following: Server Name: imap.ccs.neu.edu Port: 993 Use SSL: Yes
5.	Click the Advanced button and set the following: IMAP server directory: ~/mail Note:: for IMAP server directory, use the name of the sub-directory in your CCIS home directory that you use to store mail. If you leave this field blank, Eudora may operate very slowly because it will attempt to treat all of the files in your home directory as potential mailboxes/mailfolders. Mail or mail are common defaults. Hit ok.
6.	On the Outgoing Server item at the bottom of the left menu, set the following: Server Name: smtp.ccs.neu.edu Port: 587 Use name and password: Yes Username: username Use secure connection: TLS, if available.
7.	Hit ok to go back to the main Thunderbird window. You are done with the setup!

IMAP with Thunderbird Tip:

When you delete messages in Mozilla Thunderbird (and most IMAP mail programs), the messages are just flagged as deleted but aren't really removed from the server. Thunderbird indicates this by moving all deleted mail to the Trash folder. To actually delete the message off the server, right click the trash folder and select Empty Trash from the popup menu.

If you have issues with the configuration steps presented in this document that can not be resolved using other means, please send mail to systems@ccs.neu.edu with as much information as possible about your problem. We will do what we can to help you resolve the problem, but please note: CCIS Systems does not have the resources to support non-CCIS machines, so we may have to refer you to other forms of support.