University Computer Help Desk

Adding a contact to your address book in Thunderbird

Thunderbird includes an address book you can use to store email addresses and other information about people you know.

Add a Contact to Your Address Book

To add a contact to your address book in Thunderbird, do the following:

  1. Open Thunderbird.
  2. Click the Address Book.
    • You may notice you have two address books: Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses. These address books appear on the left side of the window. Thunderbird adds email addresses to your Collected Addresses as you send new email messages. You should add new contacts to your Personal Address Book.
  3. To add a new contact to your address book, click Personal Address Book on the left side of the window.
  4. Click New Contact.
  5. Type the first name and last name of the person whom you would like to add to your address book. The Display Name field is automatically filled out for you.
  6. In the Email: field, type the person's email address.
  7. All other fields are optional. You may enter additional information about this person, including phone numbers, postal address, job title, etc.
  8. When you are done, click OK.

You have added a new contact to your personal address book in Thunderbird.

Use Your Address Book

You can use your Thunderbird address book in a few different ways.

Thunderbird Will Suggest Email Addresses to You

When you compose a new email message, Thunderbird will automatically suggest names or email addresses from your address books when you begin typing in the To: field.

  1. Within Thunderbird, compose a new email message.
  2. You can type either a person's name or the beginning of an email address in the To: field, and Thunderbird will prompt you with suggestions.

View Address Book Sidebar

You can set up Thunderbird to display your address book as a sidebar when you compose new email messages.

  1. Within Thunderbird, compose a new email message.
  2. Click View and put a check mark next to Contacts Sidebar.
  3. You can then double-click on a contact to add it to To: line in your new email message.
    • You can also highlight a contact and click Add to To:, Add to Cc:, or Add to Bcc:, as desired.

LDAP ISU People Search

You can also configure Thunderbird with the University's people directory (LDAP). This allows you to search for all members of Illinois State University.

For more information, refer to 1233: Configuring LDAP directory in Thunderbird.