Thunderbird is one of the best email clients on the market, and best of all, it’s totally free. Created by the same guys that bring you Firefox, Thunderbird can grab your POP or IMAP mail, you can tag your stuff, set up advanced filters easily, create intuitive folder structures and the list never seems to end.

I have been looking for some productivity enhancing addons for Thunderbird so I can write emails quicker and organize myself easily. I would like to introduce you to three great addons, Notary, Quicktext and Minimize to Tray. I also want to show you how I manage my sort term tasks and phone call notes quickly without the need for any to-do list. It enables me to speak freely, think straight and come back to the tasks later on.

The extensions

Quicktext

Quicktext is akin to Shortkeys, an app that can paste any pre-written text with the push of any button. It works much like the code-paster in Wordpress, a small toolbar at the top of the edit pane. You can choose the pre-written text you want to paste, and you’re done. Since it has drop down menus you can manage multiple signatures and multiple templates easily. This is great for me, since I work with a bunch of clients and contractors and I paste different signatures for each. If I’m friendly with someone, I usually don’t want any signiture, just my name.

Notary

Notary is a text-pane at the bottom of each email where you can quickly jot down notes. They will be saved along with the email, so the relevant note is always shown. You can use this for summarizing a long email, or jotting down an action you have completed due to it. You may also use it to categorize similar emails, the possibilities are endless. I’m not so sure if these noted can be migrated though, so use it carefully.

Notary installation problems

You will most likely need a bit of help when installing Notary. It hasn’t been updated in a while and there is a version error, since Notary is for Thunderbird 1.0+, while Thunderbird is now at 2.0.0.9. Correcting this is not a huge task, and can be used for any version conflicts, although in some cases this may not work.

First of all, you need to rename the extension from “xpi” to “zip”. If you can’t see the extension of a file (this is more likely to happen when we will rename back from “zip”) take a look at my guide on how to enable the viewing of known extensions in Windows. Extract the files and find “install.rdf”, this should be the only file, apart from a folder named “chrome”. Open the file with notepad and find the following line (it’s near the bottom)

<em:maxVersion>1.0+</em:maxVersion>

Replace “1.0+” with “2.0+” and save it. You can then re-zip the folder and the file “install.rdf”. When that’s done, just rename the extension from “zip” to “xpi”. You should now be able to install and use Notary.

Minimize to Tray

Tis is a very simple tool that enables you to, well…, minimize Thunderbird to the tray. This can be immensely useful, since most of us only need out email clients when we get new mail. You don’t have to have it cluttering the taksbar if you want it open, by pressing ctr+shift+m you can minimize it all down to the tray. By the way, this extension is available for Firefox as well.

Managing simple to-do lists

Whenever I am working on something and I need to jot something down quickly, or I am having a skype call and need to put down some tasks, I create a draft email. I simply separate tasks with empty lines and write any explanations for tasks immediately under them, with an indentation. This let’s me concentrate on what I’m doing, and not on writing down stuff, since I don’t have to have Remember The Milk, or other apps open.

This is great because, especially when I’m Skyping, I need to have my mail client open and I need to look for mail. Creating a draft email for a tasks is very convenient, since I don’t have to leave the Thunderbird environment.

Download Notary from the Mozilla addons page
Download Quicktext from the Mozilla addons page
Download Minimize to Tray from the Mozilla addons page