Adding Calendar functionality to Mozilla Thunderbird ~ Ask The Admin

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Adding Calendar functionality to Mozilla Thunderbird

Before I start, I should probably introduce myself a little. My name's Phil, and I run a blog at twistedethics.com, but I'll be cross-posting all the good stuff on to here as well. By day, I'm responsible for the IT within a small company in the United Kingdom. We run a mixed-OS network, so you can be sure I'll be blogging about both Linux and Windows. I'm also a big fan of open-source alternatives for home and business, so you'll be seeing plenty of that stuff too. Which, conveniently, leads me to my first blog post!

In a bid to save money where we can, and detach ourselves from Microsoft reliance, we've deployed Thunderbird as a replacement for Outlook across a few workstations. We've found that when people switch from Microsoft Outlook to Mozilla Thunderbird they often miss having the calendar/task features. Fortunately, you can add Calendar and Task functionality to Thunderbird with the Lightning add-on.


  • Go to the Lightning download page

  • Right click on the download link and Save As... (If you don't, Firefox might try to install the add-on itself.)

  • Open up Thunderbird and click on Tools > Add-ons

  • Install the Lightning file you just downloaded

  • Once you're done, restart Thunderbird, and start using your new Calendar feature!

  • If you need Holiday calendars, you can get them here


I've only tested this in Windows, but it should work on Linux and the Mac just fine, too.

This article was originally published at twistedethics.com.