How to add identities in Thunderbird

Identities are a way of changing who you are when you send out emails, you can pretend to be someone else (sort of). You might want to do this if you're organising a conference. You might have a special email address setup for that conference and you want to send emails out as this special email account and you want people to automatically reply to this special address. Having a different identity saves you from having to tell people to please reply to special_address@damtp.cam.ac.uk etc.

To add and use an different identity is easy to do in Thunderbird. To add one, start Thunderbird and from the Tools menu choose Account Settings. Near to the bottom right of the new window that will appear, there's a button labeled 'Manage Identities', press it.

A new smaller window will appear. It will show you at least one identity Thunderbird already knows about. To add a new one, press the Add button. Another window will appear, in this you need to type in the identity name, e.g. CMS Maths 2006. Then type in your special emails address in the two boxes below the name. You can omit the organisation if you wish to. Don't change the SMTP server settings. Press OK to accept these details.

OK the remaining windows until you are back to Thunderbird. To use this new identity, compose a new message and pull down the list of identities just below the top toolbar.

You can know write the rest of your email as normal and send it. The recipient will receive it as if it was sent from the conference account.