Calendaring with Thunderbird 3 Beta
by Mandar Vaze on December 19, 2008
in Hack, Productivity, Tutorials
In my last post about Thunderbird 3 Beta, I mentioned that extensions do that work with the Tunderbird 3 Beta. One of the important Add-on I have been using with Tunderbird 2 was Lightning. This Add-on provides Calendering functionality to Thunderbird, making it (near) complete substitute for MS Outlook. Near complete because there is no MS Exchange integration yet.
Then I found out a way to get this working with the Tunderbird 3 Beta
Install the Extenstion
- Get the extension from here.
- Download the .xpi file on your computer.
- Go to Tools->Add-ons. Click on Install button. Point to the newly downloaded .xpi file.
- Restart Thunderbird 3 Beta for the Add-on to be active.
- Now you should see Lightning Nightly Updater in Add-ons list.
Configure
- Click on Options button for this extension
- If you actively use Google Calendar, then select second mode Also install Provided for Google Calendar
- Leave both options under Backup as checked
- It is good idea to click Backup Now button. If you are installing Lightning for the first time, skip this step.
This in itself doesn’t install the Lightning extension. As the name suggests, this is the extension to help you keep up to date with another extension 
- Go to Help->Check for Latest Lightning update. You will now download the real Lightning extension (Two, if you have selected to download Provider for Google Calendar)
- Download and install as usual. Restart Thunderbird for the extension to be effective.
- Now you will see two icons towards the far right of the “Tab bar”. Tooltips reveal these to be Calendar and Tasks respectively. (This puzzled me for a while, as to how do I access these functions now that I have installed the extensions)
- When you click on these icons, two new tabs will open. It is very intuitive after that.
