TB 8.0: Attachments not showing up if email body is blank

[Aaron Wood]

Hello,

With the 8.0 release of TB it seems that any emails I receive having
an attachment that also have a blank body fail to show that an
attachment is present. If I look at the source I can see the
attachment and if I click to forward the email I can see the
attachment in the email to be forwarded. If the sender simply puts one
letter in the email body then the attachments show like they should.

What is going on here? It is very annoying not to see attachments or
have to attempt to forward every message in order to see if something
is attached.

I am using TB 8.0 with a Google Apps account via IMAP.

[James Silverton]

Using 8.0, I don't notice any problems. Attachments arrive and are
indicated at the bottom on the message, whether or not there is any text.

Perhaps, I am misunderstanding your problem.

--
Jim Silverton,
Potomac, MD.

[Aaron Wood]

On Nov 11, 12:01 pm, James Silverton <jim.silver...@verizon.net>
wrote:

If somebody composes an email to me with a subject and an attached PDF
file, but does not type anything into the body of the email message
and sends it to me. I do not see the attachment on that email. If I
simply click to forward that email (the one for which the attachment
is not shown) it composes a forwarded email that has the attachment
right there. So the attachment is in fact there, but for some reason
is not displayed when I receive an email with nothing in the body.

[Al Lawrence]

Aaron Wood said the following on 11/11/2011 12:33 PM:

Could it be an Extension issue? Have you tried running TB with Add-ons disabled?

[James Silverton]

That sounds like a distinct possibility. I did exactly the same thing as
Aaron describes with a blank message and a PDF and received the PDF with
a notification.

[riamus01]

Multiple users here are having the exact same problem and I can easily
reproduce it. If I send a message (I'm on Outlook) to a TB 8.0 user
with any attachment (we've tried both PDF and TIF) with a subject, but
no message body (including no signature), the problem occurs. In
their inbox, the message is shown without an attachment icon
(paperclip). If opened, there is no attachment shown. If you forward
the message, it shows the attachment filename and size, but if you try
to open it, it tries opening an nsmail*.tmp file (the * is a number
that varies) instead of the real filename. If you do forward that to
another person not using TB 8.0, then the attachment is there and can
be opened. If you look at the email's source in TB 8.0, the
attachment information is all there. This appears to be a bug in TB
8.0 as it worked fine for each of these users prior to the 8.0
update. For now, the workaround is to tell people to resend the email
with text in the body. However, even though this works, it doesn't
change the fact that this is a TB bug that needs to be fixed. As I
said, this is happening for multiple users here (everyone who has TB
8.0).

I've tried deleting the .msf indexing file for the Inbox so that it
recreates it in case that was somehow corrupted, but it didn't make
any difference.

Hopefully there will be an update to fix this bug soon. It's been
happening ever since the 8.0 release and is not convenient for
businesses who receive emails from a large number of users who may not
always include text in the message body.

[riamus01]

A couple additional notes:

The test emails were sent as plain text from Outlook rather than HTML
or RTF. Also, the TB users are all using clean installs without any
addons.

[solid...@gmail.com]

Hello, I have the same problem here: tb 8.0
When I receive a blank email with attachment, the attachment pane is not visible, if I clic forward, then the attachment is shown
any hel would be greatly apreciated

solidus

[Mafiaman]

I have the same exact problem and have tried eveything to fix it. Only
way to see if there is an attachment is to click forward, I get
attachments all day long in my line of work. I don't have time for
this.Totally ridiculous!

[Jim]

On 11/11/2011 10:40 AM, Aaron Wood wrote:
> Hello,
>
> With the 8.0 release of TB it seems that any emails I receive having
> an attachment that also have a blank body fail to show that an
> attachment is present.

Toggle mailnews.display.show_all_body_parts_menu to true in the config
editor (Tools -> Options[1] -> Advanced -> General -> Config Editor),
then, for the messages in question, go to View -> Message Body As -> All
Body Parts.

[1] Or Edit -> Preferences

- Jim

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Mafiaman wrote:

> solidus...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Hello, I have the same problem here: tb 8.0 When I receive a blank
>> email with attachment, the attachment pane is not visible, if I clic
>> forward, then the attachment is shown any hel would be greatly
>> apreciated
>

> I have the same exact problem and have tried eveything to fix it. Only
> way to see if there is an attachment is to click forward, I get
> attachments all day long in my line of work. I don't have time for
> this.Totally ridiculous!

A good clue would be the *size* of the message as to whether or not it
had an attachment. If you don't have the Size column showing, add it to
your display.

--
-bts
-This space for rent, but the price is high

[Roger Hünen]

This workaround appears to do the trick. Thanks!

However, if the reported behavior is considered a feature rather than
a bug, these settings should be default.

Regards,
-Roger

[Jim]

On 11/18/2011 11:33 AM, Roger Hünen wrote:
> However, if the reported behavior is considered a feature rather than
> a bug, these settings should be default.

It's a bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=701261

- Jim

[John H Meyers]

On 11/18/2011 10:05 AM:

> I have the same problem here: tb 8.0
> When I receive a blank email with attachment,

> the attachment pane is not visible, if I click forward,

> then the attachment is shown

> any help would be greatly appreciated

Viewing message source (Ctrl+U) will also reveal
the fact that attachment(s) are present.

Can you extract the attachment(s) from what's saved
after Forward > save as Draft?

At any rate, a bug report has been identified:

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=701261>

See Rick Coloccia's comments (c10, c13)
[the current work-around may be harmful to displaying other messages]

If you save the message "source" (Ctrl+U) as xxx.eml
then you can open it and extract attachments
using Outlook Express, Windows [Live] Mail, WinZip,
or perhaps something else on other platforms.

The bug currently has only 6 "votes" and assignment
has been taken by: "Nobody; OK to take it and work on it" :)

--