Currently using Thunderbird email and changing ISP’s…

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The topic title has nothing to do with Win8.1 but because I use 8.1 and do not know which forum to use for my questions I post here for a start-point in getting an assist from you as to which forum is the best to post to.

I have for years used Thunderbird email and Firefox browser with 8.1.  At this time I’m test-driving T-Mobile’s new 5G Gateway and in my location, so far, it works quite well.  If I keep T-Mobile I will end my relationship with AT&T with my email address ending in att.net.  AT&T customer service advised that if I switch ISP’s that email address ending in att.net will follow me to T-Mobile and all of my mails, stored and otherwise and my contact list and the ability to send and retrieve future mail will play happily and that’s that.  My mind says, “it ain’t that simple”.  Or is it?  Once I get to the best forum I have more questions.

Please direct me to the best forum for discussing this situation.  I sure would appreciate it.

Bill

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JohnW, PKCano

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I would suggest you set up both the ATT and T-Mobile email accounts in Thunderbird (ie, add the T-Mobile account). That way you have your current TBird Address Book available to both accounts.
Use the Address Book to notify your contacts of the change of address. Until that is accomplished, you have both emails available on TBird.
When the time comes, you can remove the ATT account from TBird.

BTW. I had an ATT email account from way back when it was ATT Worldnet and dial-up. ATT moved to Yahoo’s mail hosting, and I eventually moved to cable Internet. Surprisingly, I still have my ATT email address on ATT’s Yahoo mail, even I have no TV/Internet package from them.

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kandb

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Changing ISPs with Firefox and Thunderbird is easy.

In Firefox, you may or may not need to change anything.  On the Firefox dropdown menu at the far right top, click ‘settings’.  Scroll down to the bottom and select ‘network settings’.  Click ‘settings’ again.  It’s unlikely you have some kind of ‘special’ proxy needs.  So use either ‘auto detect’ or ‘use system’.  If one doesn’t work, the other likely will.

For Thunderbird, the first step is to determine what ISP settings are needed for email.  Either log on to T-Mobile and there should be some kind of ’email settings’ page.  Alternatively, Google ‘T-Mobile email settings’ or something like that.  Those settings must be matched exactly in Thunderbird or any other email app you choose to use.

In Thunderbird, click on ‘settings’ (the little box in upper left corner of screen for newest updates).  Near the bottom of the wide grey column at left, click on ‘account settings’.  Then click on ‘server settings’ also in the wide grey column.  Make adjustments as needed to match those indicated by T-Mobile.

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kandb

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I decided to break off from my Earthlink ISP email service years before I actually made the switch to a non-ISP email provider. I wanted to be free to use any ISP without having to fiddle with switching email providers again as well.

So I took a look at Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo. Once I had made the decision on using Gmail as my primary email provider, I set up that account and started using that new email address exclusively going forward.

In the interim, I set up my desktop email program to get mail from both providers as I transitioned to the new one. It took me quite a while until I had completely notified all of my contacts, updated all of my various website accounts, bank accounts, and other business relationships of the change.

Then I left the old ISP email downloads running for a couple more years to see if I had missed anything. Once I was confident that I wouldn’t risk being cut off from any important account recovery emails, I pulled the plug on the old email provider. Finish line, yay!

I think it’s great that your old AT&T email can follow you, but is that really guaranteed long term? In my case I would have had to pay for the old email account as I no longer had internet service with that company.

And yes, Thunderbird gets the job done for me! Thumbs up!

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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wavy, kandb

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I want to post an update to my situation of leaving AT&T internet and thus losing my email address and all of my Thunderbird email/contacts/folders.  After AT&T advised that my att.net address would follow me if I enrolled with T-Mobile home internet I was skeptical.  I came to you and also searched the internet for answers and decided after looking at the Thunderbird site that indicated that Thunderbird would seamlessly integrate with G Mail and digesting your posts that my answer would be to open a G Mail account, which I didn’t want to do.  More internet searching found this link: https://forums.att.com/conversations/att-internet-account/cancelling-internetcan-i-keep-my-attnet-email/611849ad2ace6a75f0bd6f74 which confirmed what customer service told me and further when I checked in with two former co-workers one of which has Thunderbird email today and both had AT&T internet in recent years and left – they were told the same and, in fact, have kept their att.net addresses and continue to receive all mail.  So, to conclude this lengthy post I thank all of you that responded and I’ll decide in the next number of days whether I pull the AT&T plug.  See you next post.  Bill

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Good news! Always best to verify before making a major change! Measure twice, cut once!

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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kandb

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Yes, JohnW.  I’m a huge believer to measure twice and cut once.

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