manage eMails in thunderbird

How do you keep your notes? Do you stick them to your monitor or do you scribble them onto a notepad?

Notes are a quick and easy way to keep track of random, but significant thoughts and ideas. They can also help you to remember important phone number, things you need to get done or appointments. The difficult part is to keep your notes organized and not forget about them.

If Thunderbird is your eMail client, you will find the following Thunderbird notes addons very handy for organizing your thoughts and ideas. In addition, they may help you with increasing productivity with your eMail activities.

XNote

With XNote, you can attach sticky notes to individual eMails.

To take full advantage of XNote, you should first add the XNote button to your Thunderbird toolbar. For this > right-click onto an empty spot in your toolbar and select > Customize... This will bring up the "Customize Toolbar" window. Locate the XNote button and drag it into a convenient spot within your toolbar. Then hit > Done in the customization window.

You can also create a sticky through the right-click menu. Simply > right-click anywhere into an eMail and you'll find the > XNote option at the very top of the menu.

In this Thunderbird notes addon, sticky notes are attached to a single eMail and will appear only when that eMail is selected. You can re-size the sticky and move it to any location on your screen. It will disappear as soon as you select another eMail and reappear when you select that eMail again.

thunderbird notes addon

To see which eMails contain notes, you have to manually add a new column to your folder display. To do this, > left-click the right-most icon on the bar that lets you sort eMails by subject, date, etc. and select > Notes from the list.

thunderbird notes addon

For more tips a tricks, visit the XNote port to Thunderbird 3.

ThunderNote

ThunderNote is a Thunderbird notes addon that allows you to keep track of multiple notes within different categories.

It works much like a standalone tool, only that it is integrated into Thunderbird with a separate toolbar button. You can add the button to your toolbar as described for the XNote button above.

When you click the button, ThunderNote launches within a separate window.

thunderbird notes addon

You can now add categories and notes. This extension features only the bare necessities, i.e. writing notes, organizing them within categories, printing individual notes, syncing, as well as import/export through CSV files.

sync notes

For more information about ThunderNote, visit its Google Code site.

Are you looking for Thunderbird-independent note taking apps? Jeffry covered Four Free Quick Note Taking Apps For The Mac. I compiled 3 Dead-simple Apps For Note Taking & List Making (Windows and online) and I introduced the online tool Springnote.

If you haven't done so yet, I recommend you to extend Thunderbird with Google Calendar to handle your appointments. I have described the procedure in my post How To Integrate Google Calendar Into Thunderbird and even though the versions have changed, it essentially still works the same.

Have you adjusted Thunderbird to increase your productivity? Please share what works best for you!