How do I set up more than 1 user on a Thunderbird account?

[#1]

Hi All
The demise of XP means that I need to migrate my email client (currently MS Outlook 2000) to a similar programme that will work in Windows 7 environment. Mozilla's Thunderbird seemed a reasonable replacement..
Under MS Outlook 2000, it was possible to set up a number of users on the same account. So for instance you could have:
fred@bloggs.plus.com
joe@bloggs.plus.com
mary@bloggs.plus.com
This worked great as it meant everyone in the family could use it.
Sadly I can't seem to set up Thunderbird to work this way........ I had no problems adding one user, but T'bird refuses to allow me to add any more!
Am I doing something wrong? I can't locate the solution in Plusnet's guidance. It's essential that the email client can manage more than one user on the account.

[#2]

That should work fine with Thunderbird. I have 5 different mailboxes simultaneously collected on my Plusnet account, plus one from elsewhere.
With multiple Plusnet mailboxes you must have one set up in Manage My Mail (MMM) as default. I'll assume that is the 'fred' mailbox. That will be accessed using the account name 'bloggs' with the account password. The additional mailboxes are accessed using bloggs+joe and bloggs+mary with their respective passwords (set in MMM).
To define the additional accounts in Thunderbird click Tools->Account Settings, then click Account Actions (bottom left) and Add Mail Account. Complete the dialogue boxes, taking note that the username entry needs to be the bloggs+joe style mentioned above (though the email address is joe@bloggs.plus.com.
Plusnet provide a setup help guide here.
Note that if you use IMAP (which I'd recommend)  the incoming port number will be 143 (automatically set). I'd also suggest using port 587 for SMTP rather than the default of 25.

[#3]

Hi spraxyt
I'm really grateful for your guidance but I have to confess I'm more than a bit baffled!
First of all the easy stuff: re POP3 or IMAP, I elected to go for POP3 simply because I like to automatically download onto my PC all my emails that are held on Plusnet's server. Handy if your connection goes down and you need to work on an email response, for example.  Also, very interesting that you recommend port 587 for SMTP rather than the default of 25. Plusnet's setup guidance for T'bird specifies port 25 whereas T'bird defaulted to 587!
Turning to the bit that's still got me really baffled ... the additional mailboxes. I think I understand what you are getting at but nowhere in PN's guidance can I find anything that describes setting up additional mailboxes in this way.. (ie bloggs+joe etc). Also, I checked my current email settings for my Plusnet account and it looks as though the default is styled in the following way:
bloggs @bloggs.plus.com
Then I have around 8 individual email addresses for the family all styled as per my original message on here.
I suppose what I need to know is this: precisely how do I go about changing them? especially when there is no dummies' guidance for people like me?
The setup guide that you recommended is the one I used to try to set up the accounts in T'bird but I couldn't find anything in there either about the different way of presenting the usernames etc.
Here's hoping you can advise further!!

[#4]

Going from the guide, you need to repeat steps 1 through 5 for each account you want to use seperately.  (you only need to do steps 6+ once)
If you've got 8 individual address,  you'll need to repeat those steps 8 times, changing the information in step 2 and the username in step 3 for each of the addresses.

[#5]

Sorry kmilburn but I'm really struggling to get my head around this!  Let me try to clarify your advice a bit further if I may:-
Using the bloggs family example.... in step 2, are you saying the email address should read:  "bloggs+joe@plus.com" for instance?
And if so, how would plusnet's server recognise this?

[#6]

Quote

are you saying the email address should read:  "bloggs+joe@plus.com" for instance?

No, in your example the email address is joe@bloggs.plus.com BUT the username ( for POP/IMAP login ) is bloggs+joe

[#7]

@hollytree
A couple of questions
Can you confirm that the accounts are separate mailboxes (ie listed as "Mailbox" type in Manage my mail) and not aliases?
Do the login details in Outlook 200 contain "bloggs+joe" as the username?

[#8]

@MisterW: ahhhh ok! I understand  Cheers
@PeeGee: ok a couple of very good questions there. In reply:
- Re the accounts in Plusnet: they are aliases according to MMM and not separate mailboxes ( I guess this might have a significant impact on my original question so sorry I didn't know there was a difference)
- Re Outlook 2000 login details: No, the login details don't contain the "bloggs+joe" format for the username. For the email address, each of the users has a separate prefix (ie joe, fred, mary followed in each case by the suffix @bloggs.plus.com). However, the username is literally the name of the user and nothing else!
Hope this helps!

[#9]

Ah, well there's the problem. You can't have multiple accounts for essentially the one single email mailbox.
There is a way in thunderbird to add additional identities to the email account, which will allow you to choose which one to use when sending/replying to emails. Was that the original request you asked about?

[#10]

Right, that clarifies things (I think)!
Do you have separate "XP users" or does everyone use the same login details? I assume the latter as you are trying to set-up multiple account access profiles that clash.
That means you have one mailbox that holds all the e-mails, so each user connects using the same login details and then uses filtering to only download messages addressed to them. That, however, requires filtering at the server (POP3 filtering) which was only available with Pegasus mail the last time I used a MS Windows e-mail client. Unfortunately, I do not use Thunderbird for e-mails (only for newsgroups) so am stuck at this point - so you will need help from someone else here (cue spraxyt)
You would need to look at what filtering you have been using and see if that could be translated for Thunderbird (I believe there are some conversion facilities for transferring e-mails). An alternative would be to switch to separate mailboxes to keep messages separate on the server, then it would probably be much easier to set-up.

[#11]

Quote from: hollytree

The demise of XP means that I need to migrate my email client (currently MS Outlook 2000) to a similar programme that will work in Windows 7 environment.

What's wrong with Outlook 2000? Or have you lost the install disc and key? 

[#12]

@hollytree  Sorry I'd misunderstood how you had things organised, I handle the requirement differently myself, but no problem with whatever works for you.
The previous replies query if 'identities' are what is needed, or if 'message rules' are being used to move the messages to different folders. I do both of those with my Thunderbird accounts; message rules in Thunderbird are known as message filters.
In the absence of further information from the OP I suggest taking a look at two Mozilla knowledge base articles
https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/using-identities for information on using identities, and
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Message_Filters for information on using message filters.
Regarding use of port 587 for SMTP. Make sure that Thunderbird doesn't automatically turn on security with that. I can't remember if it does, but apart from the port number the settings need to be exactly the same as Plusnet show for port 25 (including proceeding past the security warning).

[#13]

Quote from: RPMozley

Ah, well there's the problem. You can't have multiple accounts for essentially the one single email mailbox. There is a way in thunderbird to add additional identities to the email account, which will allow you to choose which one to use when sending/replying to emails.

Hi RPMozley  Thanks for this. I guess I'm starting to understand that there is an important difference between identities and accounts!

Quote from: RPMozley

There is a way in thunderbird to add additional identities to the email account, which will allow you to choose which one to use when sending/replying to emails. Was that the original request you asked about?

Yes, I think that may well have been what I was driving at. The important thing is that each family member needs to have a unique email address and, ideally, that they don't have to change their already unique email addresses that were set up so easily when I was using Outlook 2000! Would you mind pointing me in the right direction for this T'bird guidance, cos I must have missed it? Cheers..

[#14]

Quote from: PeeGee

Do you have separate "XP users" or does everyone use the same login details? I assume the latter as you are trying to set-up multiple account access profiles that clash.

Yes, I think you've uncovered the root of the problem... cheers.
Important issue! If we go down the road of setting up separate mailboxes for each family member (at the Plusnet server?) would they still be able to access them on the same XP/ Windows 7/Windows 8.1 user?

[#15]

Quote from: spraxyt

In the absence of further information from the OP I suggest taking a look at two Mozilla knowledge base articles https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/using-identities for information on using identities, and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Message_Filters for information on using message filters.

How to set up and use Identities info is provided in the first link spraxyt gave you in the quote above.