Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Friday, December 02, 2005

IT - Thunderbird: How to change "undisclosed recipients" in bcc messages

Instructions provided by Parish in the Thunderbird support newsgroup.

The file that has to be modified (en_US.jar) is located in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\chrome

****************************************************************
1. *Backup en_US.jar*
2. Create an empty directory - C:/foo for this example.
3. Using WinZip open en-US.jar and extract composeMsgs.properties to C:/foo but make sure you check "Use folder names"
4. Open C:/foo/locale/en-US/messenger/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties in your favourite text editor.
5. Find the text (it's line 227)
6. Edit the text to taste and save the file.
7. In WinZip, open en-US.jar again and click the Add icon, then
+ navigate to C:/foo
+ leave *.* in "File name"
+ check "Include sub-folders" in the "Folders" panel
+ select "Freshen existing files" in the "Actions" drop-down
+ click "Freshen with wildcards"

Note the steps in 7. are important as they ensure WinZip replaces the existing file, rather than add it as a new file in the root (without a path)
******************************************************************

I would still be interested in finding out how to get rid of the ":;" characters at the end of the To field.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

IT - How to verify e-mail addresses without actually sending messages

This is something I had been wondering about for some time, and thanks to some expert help from the Thunderbird newsgroup (Bill McCartney in particular) I finally got to the bottom of it today.

Here is the procedure:

1. Export address book(s) as *.ldif file(s) and rename the file(s) to .txt

2. Use a program called Email Finder Pro to extract the addresses and rename the output file to *.lst - note that support for the program has been discontinued, but Bill kindly sent it to me, and since there don't appear to be any restrictions on distribution I have placed it here for downloading.

3. Download and install ListMaster Pro (LMP) .

4. In LMP, under File > Config enter your DNS Server IP (in my case this is shown at the top of this page) and your e-mail address (ideally this should be an address that matches your ISP).

5. Open the previously saved *.lst file (File > Load - change the file type box at the bottom to [*.lst] so the file will show up), then select "Verify all addresses".

6. "Sit back and enjoy the show", as it says in the LMP help file, which you should read, because it contains useful information on how to interpret the results.