Setting up Zimbra in Thunderbird

You can access your Zimbra email, contacts and calendar without installing a thing on your computer by using the web browser on your computer.

However you can still use a dedicated email client which can boost productivity and adds offline capabilities. Sometimes it is just more convienient to work on a larger screen that comes with a laptop or desktop computer.

Zimbra works well with Thunderbird and here are some short videos that show you how to set-up Zimbra in Thunderbird.

This article assumes that you have already installed Thunderbird. For more information on downloading and installing this software, go to Mozilla’s Thunderbird page, https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ .

You will need:

  • Your Zimbra email address and password.
  • Your Zimbra mail server domain. This is usually in the form of mail.domain.com. It is likely the same as what you use to sign-on to Zimbra web interface.

Your system administrator will be able to give you this information if you do not already have it.

Adding your Zimbra Email to Thunderbird

To add Zimbra mail to Thunderbird follow these steps:

Please note this is an example video, this means:

  • You have to replace zimbra10.barrydegraaff.nl and admin@barrydegraaff.nl with values provided by your administrator or provider.
  • In most cases you can leave the port fields empty and Thunderbird will find the correct ones! I only typed the SMTP port value as in my case port 25 would work, but for most people it would not. Which is why I typed 587 in the above video.

Adding your Zimbra Calendar to Thunderbird

Once your calendar is added in Thunderbird you can

  • Create appointments
  • Edit appointments created from the Web Client or another device
  • Delete appointments
  • Move appointments
  • Dismiss appointments
  • Accept and send calendar invites

To set up your Zimbra calendar in Thunderbird follow these steps:

Please note this is an example video, this means:

  • You have to replace zimbra10.barrydegraaff.nl and admin@barrydegraaff.nl with values provided by your administrator or provider.

If you use multiple calendars or have accepted calendar shares from other users, you can subscribe to them all at once or select the calendars you want to subscribe to by omitting the calendar name. In this case Thunderbird will ask you what calendars you want to subscribe to. Use the URL as follows: https://zimbra.example.com/dav/<YOUR USERNAME HERE>/

Adding your Zimbra Contacts to Thunderbird

To add your Zimbra Contacts (Address Book) to Thunderbird install the CardBook Add-on for Thunderbird. If you have trouble installing the add-on please read the help document provided here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-addon-thunderbird

Once it is installed add your Zimbra address book to Thunderbird following these steps:

Please note this is an example video, this means:

  • You have to replace zimbra10.barrydegraaff.nl and admin@barrydegraaff.nl with values provided by your administrator or provider.

Further reading

https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Accessing_Zimbra_Collaboration_Server_with_Thunderbird

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2 Responses to Setting up Zimbra in Thunderbird

  1. João Dias September 4, 2023 at 4:08 AM #

    And access to shared calendars? not public…

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