How to Make Thunderbird Your Default Email Program in Vista

Thunderbird is a Personal Information Management and email software program written and maintained by the Mozilla foundation, the same company behind the popular Firefox Web browser. While Microsoft Windows Vista includes an email client -- Windows Mail -- built into the operating system, the Thunderbird client gives you more features and a higher level of compatibility between different operating systems and platforms. You can set the Thunderbird email client as the default client in Windows Vista so that all email messages pass through it.

Instructions

1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird.

2. Click the "Tools" menu.

3. Click "Options."

4. Click the "Advanced" tab.

5. Check "Always check to see if Thunderbird is the default mail client on startup."

6. Click the "Check Now" button.

7. Click "OK" twice to finalize the settings.

Tips & Warnings

• While you can install multiple email clients on Windows Vista, you can only have a single client set to be the default.

Resources

• Mozilla Messaging: Thunderbird 3.1