Step 0 – Presumptions

For this set up I am assuming you do the same as I do and don’t use me.com for email. We need to edit the folder used for Drafts to get the Notes to work and  this would obviously interfere with normal usage if you actually wanted to save an email as a draft email and not as a note!

Step 1 – Add Your iCloud Account to Thunderbird

Create a new mail account manually using the following details:

Type: IMAP
Server: p01-imap.mail.me.com (you can also use p02... or p03...)
Port: 993
Username: first part of your me.com email eg for fishface@me.com enter fishface
Connection security: SSL/TLS
Authentication method: Normal password

By now you should be able to see your Notes folder and any iOS notes will be shown as emails in this folder. If the Notes folder does not show up then right-click (or ctrl-click on Mac) the account in the left-hand pane and select ‘Subscribe’ then make sure that the ‘Notes’ folder is ticked (or ‘checked’ if you’re an American)

Step 2 – Make the Notes Folder Editable

By default, and for obvious reasons, you can’t edit an email that is already on the server. You can, however, edit Draft emails. If we set our Notes folder to act like Drafts then we will be able to edit the emails/notes within the folder.

To do this go to the account preferences by right-clicking (or ctrl-clicking on Mac) the xxx@me.com account in the left pane (as per Step 1, above, for subscribing to the Notes folder) but this time select ‘Settings…’ from the context menu. In the account settings select ‘Copies & Folders’ and then scroll down to ‘Drafts and Templates’. For ‘Keep message drafts in:’ you need to select ‘Other’ and then select the ‘me.com’ account and the ‘Notes’ folder.

This means that if you ever save an email (or note in our case) on this account then it will save it to the Notes folder. You can also double click any email/note in the Notes folder and Thunderbird will allow you to edit it.

You may also want to go to the ‘Composition & Addressing’ settings and untick (uncheck) the ‘Compose messages in HTML format’ option. This isn’t required but HTML in the notes can sometimes cause strange things to happen (see ‘Known Issues’ section near the end).

Step 3 – Enable the Apple-Specific Mail Header

For the Mac Mail app to ‘detect’ that they are notes and not emails the notes have an Apple-specific header in their source:

X-Uniform-Type-Identifier: com.apple.mail-note

The Mac Mail app then knows to show these as Notes and the iDevices check this folder then import the emails as notes in the Notes app in iOS. Having an email in the Notes folder alone is not enough for it to be treated as a note, it needs the special header. The simplest way to add this is to create a custom header option in the ‘to/cc/bcc’ dropdown area of the compose window. To do this go to Thunderbird Preferences then select the ‘Advanced’ tab and then ‘Config Editor…’. Accept the warning about dragons as shown below:

In the preferences list that is now shown enter ‘mail.compose.other.header‘ into the filter at the top.

Double-click the ‘mail.compose.other.header‘ line and enter the string value: X-Uniform-Type-Identifier and press ‘OK’.

Step 4 – Compose Your Note

Now, when composing a new email/note, you will have an extra option in the ‘to/cc/bcc’ dropdown box for ‘X-Uniform-Type-Identifier’ as below:

And enter com.apple.mail-note for the value. Note that you do not need a ‘to’ address and if you enter one it will be ignored in the Notes apps. Once written it will look something like this:

When you have composed your note you need to save it and NOT send it! Trying to send it will give an error anyway as there are no recipients. To save it either click the ‘Save’ icon and then close the window or click to close the window and you will be prompted to save it as a draft. Saving it as a draft will save it to the iCloud IMAP Notes folder – which is exactly what we want. You will then see the note in Thunderbird and, if you open your iOS Notes app, you will also see it there:

Step 5 – Editing Notes

If you edit the note in the iOS Notes app then the subject will automatically be changed to the first line of the note text, in our example the subject becomes ‘Here is a note, written in Thunderbird!’. This is shown in both the Notes app and Thunderbird below:

To edit a note in Thunderbird simply double click it to bring up the compose window again and close/save it to save it back to the Notes (Drafts) folder. If the note does not appear in the iOS Notes app then you may need to close and reopen the app or edit the note in Thunderbird again to make sure you have added the X-Uniform-Type-Identifier header value as com.apple.mail-note.

Known Issues

Editing in Thunderbird is where some anomalies can occur. We set the iCloud account to use plain text (we turned off HTML email as an optional part of Step 2) and Thunderbird does honour this – if you view the message source you will see the content type header says:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1;

So double-clicking on a note to edit it will bring up the plain text editor without all the HTML formatting options such as bold and text colour etc. But notes that are either created or edited in the iOS Notes app are marked as being HTML emails with the header:

Content-Type: text/html;
	charset=utf-8

This means when you double-click to edit the note in Thunderbird you get all the HTML editing options. It also means that HTML headers are added to the message itself. For the note itself this is not an issue – it displays correctly in both Thunderbird and in the iOS Notes app. The issue relates to the subject header. Because the iOS Notes app insists on using the first line of the note as the subject i means it also copies some of the HTML code. While the HTML code itself is not shown in the subject it does show blank characters in its place making the subject indented as below:

If this happens to one of your notes then the quickest way to fix it is to open the note in the iOS Notes app, tap in the note to bring up the keyboard, tap and hold on the text, tap Select All, tap Copy, then tap the ‘delete’ key. This will have copied the text for the note and given you a blank canvas. Now you need to put the text back, which you do as follows: tap and hold the text area, tap on Paste and then tap Done. Now, go back to the list of notes and the subject should be back to normal.

Any Other Issues?

I’ve not come across any yet… But feel free to comment with any issues you have if you use this method (surely there can’t only be me that uses Thunderbird and iCloud Notes?!) or if you have any tips & tricks to add!

In 2003, a couple of years after I finished uni, I started using a little-known browser called ‘Firebird‘ – this was at version 0.6. By the time it went public with version 1.0 it had been known as ‘Firefox’ for some time. It has, since then, been my browser of choice. I’ve grown up with Firefox and even remember the excitement of it hitting version 1.0!

So in late 2003 when I discovered that the same team who made Firefox had been working on an email client, known as Thunderbird, I jumped at the chance even though it was currently at version 0.5. Again, I feel like I grew up with Thunderbird and it’s been my email client of choice for the best part of a decade. When I switched from Windows to Mac for my day-to-day work in late 2008 it was stupidly simple to shift all my history, settings and plugins for both Firefox and Thunderbird from my Windows machine to the MacBook Pro – oh the joys of cross-OS software! Because it was so easy to transfer I stuck with both Firefox (for web browsing) and Thunderbird (for email and newsgroups).

I’ve used both for almost a decade and, as such, I’ve got used to them. While I do use Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer to test websites, my day-to-day use is powered by Mozilla. I just don’t get on with the Mac Mail app either although I can’t quite put my finger on why…

So, going back to the Notes on iPhone/iPad, these were recently shifted over from me.com to iCloud but worked in the same way – they could be synced across devices. These last few months I’ve been using Notes more and more and wanted to be able to edit them on my MacBook Pro (and possibly even my Windows computer). The Mac Mail app handles Notes as part of the email account so it got me wondering if I could do the same but using Thunderbird. Thankfully, after a lot of fiddling, trial and error and some lost notes, I have got a working solution. This works on both Mac OSX, Windows and Linux (basically any OS that you can run Thunderbird on).

So, how is it done? Put simply, the Notes are essentially emails stored in a specific ‘Notes’ folder in the me.com IMAP mail account on Apple’s servers. These need to be ‘detected’ as being Notes (rather than regular emails) and need to be editable. The next post will detail how you can achieve this in Thunderbird:

How To: iCloud Notes in Mozilla Thunderbird

I do like to think though that because of me wasting their time for 12 minutes it means one less person today will have been tricked. I provide a public service, don’t you know?!

Listen to it here:

Dearest one,

PLEASE STOP DEALING WITH THOSE PEOPLE/OFFICE….

My name is Mrs. Mary Susan Derrick. I am an US citizen,  I am one of those that
were scammed by Nigerian scam artist 4 years ago and i received a compensation
notification from the Joakin compensation house earlier last month for the sum
of $1.5M but i felt it was all the same group of scammers because i have paid
over $36,000 trying to get my payment all to no avail.

So I decided to travel down to Nigeria with all my compensation documents, And I
was directed to meet Rev Dr Garry Davies, who is the member of COMPENSATION
AWARD COMMITTEE, and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said
whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.

He took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment.Right now
I am the most happiest woman on  earth because I have received my compensation
funds of $1,500,000.00 Moreover, Rev Dr Garry Davies, showed me the full
information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw you as one
of the beneficiaries, and your email address,names and address and also your
telephone number that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those
people, they are not with your fund,they are only making money out of you. I
will advise you to contact Rev Dr Garry Davies. You have to contact him directly
on this information below.

JOAKIN COMPENSATION HOUSE
Name : Rev Dr Garry Davies
Email: revdrgarry.davies1989@hmail2.com
Phone: +234-7094484709

You really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and
telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are
only taking advantage of  you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.

The only money I paid after I met Rev Dr Garry Davies was just $600 for the
paper works, take note of that.

Once again stop contacting those people, I will  advise you to contact Rev Dr
Garry Davies so that he can help you to Deliver your fund instead of you dealing
with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of
money to complete your transaction.

Note: Without the office of Rev Dr Garry Davies you will never receive your
payment, contact him he will let you know the situation of things those who
scammed you because he told me those who scammed me but no where to get them. He
knows about the people you are dealing with right now, but he will give you more
information’s upon your contact with him.

Thank You and Be Blessed.
Mrs. Mary Susan Derrick

Apparently though, this response was incorrect so the BBC Editors set out to make an official statement of how they deal with such situations. You can read it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2011/08/use_of_photographs_from_social.html

So, what was I shocked and appalled by?

In terms of permission and attribution, we make every effort to contact people who’ve taken photos we want to use in our coverage and ask for their permission before doing so.

And so they should when using other people’s work! But that part is fine; now, read on…

However, in exceptional situations, where there is a strong public interest and often time constraints, such as a major news story like the recent Norway attacks or rioting in England, we may use a photo before we’ve cleared it.

Sorry, what?! You would happily use a copyrighted image without permission?! No, that’s just wrong! If you don’t have permission then you should not use it! It’s very simple.

We don’t make this decision lightly – a senior editor has to judge that there is indeed a strong public interest in making a photo available to a wide audience.

I think that makes it even worse. Whether you commit a crime without any care in the world or if you spend a short time deliberating over it, it is still wrong. Just because a “senior editor” says it is OK to steal, that doesn’t make it better. If a “senior mob member” said it is OK to steal I guess that also excuses the rest of the mob?

Imagine if I took that stance. There are a lot of British ex-pat’s that live in Spain that would probably love to see the current series of Dr Who (one of the BBC’s finest televisual outpourings). However BBC’s iPlayer does not work in Spain (it requires a UK IP address for obvious license-paying reasons so these people cannot see it). There are a lot of them so it could easily be argued that it is in the public’s interest for these people to watch Dr Who. So, I will email the BBC to ask permission to rip the video and post it online, publicly, for free for any member of the public who wishes to see it. I will give them a couple of hours, maybe a day at most, to let me know whether or not I can. It’s quite important, and in the public’s interest, to see Dr Who as soon as possible after broadcast as there are many online discussions that may provide spoilers for these viewers. If I don’t hear back from them then that would mean it is OK to act in this way.

I presume you can see the idiocy of this stance? I wonder if the BBC will…

The 2nd half of Dr Who starts again in a couple of weeks. I have plenty of spare webspace and bandwidth…

It’s a big commitment, once you get to ‘Z’ you need to start back at ‘A’ again and like in Mallet’s Mallet you cannot repeat yourself – the elves and wolves, remember them? So, my question is this: Am I committed enough to start doing ‘Music Monday’? We’ll see…

This morning I had this in my inbox:

Hello MaFt

Thank you for your reply.

Your order xxxxxxxxx has now been amended for the HDD0133. All been well will be despatched this evening for delivery on Monday/Tuesday of next week.  Could you please ensure that they will be someone their too accept and sign for the goods.

If you require any further help or assistance please do not hesitate too contact us back by return of mail.

Kind Regards
::name removed::
CCL Returns Department.

There are, technically, no spelling mistakes in there; so well done in that sense! However, I count 5 grammatical errors where the wrong word has been used. For someone speaking on behalf of a big company you’d think they would at least try and give a good impression!

I honestly wouldn’t normally nit-pick to this degree but 5 errors in such a short email did make me laugh!

Enjoy!