The easiest way is to set up your email account with IMAP, if your email provider allows it. IMAP is designed to allow one account to be managed from multiple devices.

When I orinally set up in linux it did set itself in imap and it would not function, I ended up having to delete the account reinstall manually to make sure it was pop then tbird was usable in the mint program.

You'd have to give us more information about how it 'didn't function' -- what error messages you received and so on. There's no reason in principle why Thunderbird won't work with Linux, I have it in Xubuntu and it copes happily with several IMAP accounts. Does it come bundled with the Mint desktop? If not can you download it from a Mint 'software centre'? I'm not familiar with Mint so I don't know what facilities it offers. But in general, you're more likely to get things working if you install software versions that are designed to work with your distro than if you try to download and install stuff ad hoc.

It was already avaiable in mint and so it was a click and install,

I don't actually recall any error messages but on trouble shooting there were entries in the make up of the install settings that were nothing like what was in the same sections on windows.

That is the best I can do it was a month or so ago.

Would I be better off doing a fresh install manually and setting it to Imap.

I can't say definitely that you will be better off but if I were in your shoes, yes that's what I would try. Just a few bits of advice: 1) I'm not clear from your post whether you currently have a POP account or both machines or whether the Windows machine is already IMAP. Anyway, if you are switching over there is a tutorial here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switch-pop-imap-account 2) Just in case things go wrong make a backup copies of your Thunderbird profile on both machines first. 3) To get a clean installation on the Linux machine remember to uninstall the whole package first. Also delete the hidden .thunderbird folder in your home folder (this contains your profile which you should have already backed up). If you don't remove that the new installation will inherit the settings from the old one, which you want to avoid.

Sorry for the late responce,

Both pc's had pop running, My aim was to have my main pc d/load mail and others to be able to view it. The link you posted was what I used to add Imap alongside pop on my linux pc it seems to work. The downside is when using the same email address you are unable to edit settings afterward,so any tweaking needs to be done first.

Thanks for the extra information on how to ensure proper removal of thunderbird on linux, will probably do this in near future.