If I understand correctly, you can use Thunderbird to manage your gmail account. The setup info is this:

incoming server: imap.gmail.com port 993 connection ssl/tls authentication OAUTH2 SMTP server: smtp.gmail.com port 465 connection ssl/tls authentication OAUTH2

I am completely ignorant here, thank you for the reply, but my problem is just the opposite.Our little town has their own city owned utilities, including telephone and cable, all of my computers and TV's are hard wired, some use wireless. I don't know the reason, but the city is scrapping the BMTC.net email that some people here use, and confirmed to me yesterday that at the first of next year, the BMTC.net address will be non existent. In plain english I/We will no longer have email. I do have gmail, not a fan, but is there a way to attach Thunderbird to Gmail so my Thunderbird doesn't just disappear? If not, how would I, or could I, keep my Thunderbird using a different address, instead of my present daknel@bmtc.net? Sorry for my ignorance here, but have never had a reason to explore an email dilemma before, and I'm about to turn 81. Hundreds of other folks here have the same problem, and if you can solve it, I can help 2300 adults and students here solve theirs. Thank you, and I was very happy to see a reply to my question. Sorry I can't articulate it any better.

Thunderbird is just the email manager and you can have any number of email accounts on it, although most probably just have one, as you do. For Thunderbird (or any other email client) to work, it needs to know the internet address of the server with incoming mail and the internet address of the server that processes outgoing mail. So, to create an account for gmail on Thunderbird, here are the basic steps: - click File>new>existing email address - on that pane, enter the information for the account but do NOT enter the email password - click CONTINUE - Thunderbird will then search for the technical stuff for the account and, since gmail is common and popular, it has that and displays it. Now click DONE - if all goes well, you will be presented with a screen from Google, requesting your gmail password and asking you to confirm that you will allow Thunderbird to access your email. Click 'Accept'. - and you're done.

NEW TOPIC: - when the old account is removed from service, you can remove it from thunderbird by these steps: - highlight the account to be removed - rightclick and select 'settings' - scroll down left side bar until you see 'account actions', which is a menu. Click the 'remove account' option and the old BMTC account will be removed.

I anticipate you may have more questions, so keep this email in case you need to post followup questions.

A follow-up: you mentioned not being a fan of Gmail. Well, there are others that you may prefer that are free. One is outlook.com . I like it because the web interface is friendly. Another free one is gmx.com that does well. And there is also Yahoo.com. All four of these work well with Thunderbird, although each has its own special setup instructions.

Thank you David, nice to know that I can do that, hate to bother with more, but this one is quite important to me. I have tons of information in files and folders that I can't lose, so when my present bmtc account ends, does my new account begin as a new account without saved information from the old account? Or does everything get transferred that is saved on bmtc? I suspect that whatever I want to keep for my records I will need to transfer/save/copy/ one way or another to a pc. All I need from you is a yes or a no, do I need to save it myself, or will it transfer as the original account with bmtc.net? Thank you for the help, much much appreciate! Don

You are responsible to save it. If you're not sure how to do that, post back whether the account is POP or IMAP. If unsure, highlight the account, rightclick and select 'settings' and then click 'server settings' and that next pane will show POP or IMAP.