Sep/090
Set Alert per Email Account in Thunderbird with Mailbox Alert
If you’re like me then there’s a high possibility you have more than one account set up within Thunderbird – none of which ever receive any email of any importance, other than your main account. You also may be using Thunderbird as your RSS Reader; with multiple subscriptions in place that alert you of articles that still go without being read.
The issue I had here is that I did not want an audio alert when an RSS feed was updated, or when one of my Admin email address for a website of mine received an enquiry via a contact form. Far too many times I heard the Thunderbird audio alert, ran into my room, each step being like a journey up the stairs to heaven as I anticipate hearing from a loved one – only to trip and fall to the depths of below as I realise it was a mere ‘undelivered email’ notification from my server.
An issue which I had always wanted a solution for but never solved, I browsed through the Thunderbird options, surprised and disappointed at the lack of control. With nothing but a global setting for sound/visual alerts – I then hit the Thunderbird Add-ons site and came across the ‘Mailbox Alert’ extension. Not updated in years yet it’s assumed the developer adopts a ‘If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it approach’ and the simple yet powerful add-on solves the problem beautifully.
Setting up a unique sound for each folder / email account
You should have little trouble setting this up but I did get caught out so here’s one approach.
1) Firstly grab the extension from the Thunderbird Add-ons website
2) Right click the email (or Blog) account that you want to customise the alert for and select ‘Mailbox Alert’ from the menu that appears
Mailbox Alert Preferences
3) From here, simply tick the checkbox for ‘Play a Sound’ and select your custom .wav file (as annoyingly the ‘System Default’ is near useless – certainly doesn’t use the Thunderbird default sound). A quick Google search for ‘Email Notification Wav Sounds’ should provide all you need here.
4) A final step that I took was to go into Thunderbird options and untick the ‘Play a Sound’ box under the General tab, otherwise you’ll find both sounds play when an email arrives.
This is a simple guide on setting a sound to play for a single account (and not others) but the extension is flexible in you set folder alert settings individually and also configure the child/parent relationship inheritance. Do play about with the options to get it working in a way that’s best for you – the ‘Test these settings’ button will demonstrate the alert in action, which is useful for me as I haven’t received an email from a loved one since my February, and even that was a mistake.