GTD with Thunderbird
A quick way to make Thunderbird more efficient by installing an "Archive" button, similar to the one in GMail.
First, go download the Buttons! extension for Thunderbird and save it somewhere memorable. Once it's downloaded, install it by going to: Tools | Extensions and clicking Install, and then finding 'buttons.xpi'. Once it's installed, restart Thunderbird.
At this point, we need to set up an archive folder, so right-click on 'Local Folders' and select 'New Folder'. I just called mine Archive, but you can call it whatever you want.
Now we're going to set up our Archive button. First, go back to Tools | Extensions, right-click on Buttons! and choose 'Options'. Finally, hit the Archive! tab. Using the drop-down menu, choose the folder you just created, and hit 'Add'. Before you close the dialog box, select the folder that was just added and hit 'Set as default', then hit 'OK'.
Now, go up to the toolbar and right-click on it, next to the last button, and click 'Customize'. You will see a bunch of buttons in front of you. Just scroll down until you find the one that says 'Archive!'. Once you've found it, drag it to the toolbar, after the last button on there. This adds the button to the toolbar.
If you select a message and click 'Archive', it will move that message to your archive folder. Buttons! also lets you add other folders, but you have to click twice, one on a small target, which I find this to be just about as tedious as dragging-and-dropping.
So instead, we can use Search Folders to organize our messages. To make a search folder, right-click your archive folder and select 'Search Messages...'. Enter the search terms that will identify a class of messages you want to separate out. Once you have the right search terms, hit 'Search' and then 'Save as Search Folder'.
Examples:
To organize my email at work, I've set up some simple search folders. First, since we use FogBugz here at work for all our bug tracking, I made a search folder called Bugs that gets all messages which have a Subject starting with 'FogBugz (Case'. To track source control check-ins, I added two other search folders, one that looks for any Copilot check-ins, called Copilot CVS, which searches for 'CVS' and 'Copilot', and another that looks for all other check-ins, just called CVS, which searches for everything starting with 'CVS' but not 'Copilot'.
If you have any questions, or want a GMail account, just leave a comment below. You can also check out Entropic Principal's Thunderbird GTD suggestions for more ways to streamline your emailing.
