Sending of message failed. Unable to open the temporary file.

Sophie Doell

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Dec 20, 2006, 5:09:27 PM12/20/06

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This is the message I have been getting randomly when I send emails or
try to save a draft (it says "unable to save your message as draft"
instead of "sending of message failed" when attempting to save as
draft). I can't recall when exactly this started happening, so can't
tell what exactly may have caused it. The full error message reads:

Sending of message failed. Unable to open the temporary file. Check
your "Temporary Directory" setting.

Where exactly is the temporary directory setting? How do I fix this
problem?

Thanks for any help.

Sophie

Snagglepuss

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Dec 20, 2006, 6:46:54 PM12/20/06

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close the program, then delete all the *.msf files within the mail
section of your TB profile.

--
"Oh! Heavens to Murgatroid. Exit, Stage Left!" -- Snagglepuss
http://www.toonopedia.com/snaggle.htm

Please do not email me for help. Reply to the newsgroup only. Thanks

Nir

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Dec 20, 2006, 7:06:59 PM12/20/06

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do you get this problem only when you try to send attachment ?

Sophie Doell

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Dec 20, 2006, 8:24:37 PM12/20/06

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on 12/20/2006 7:06 PM Nir said the following:

No, it happens with plain emails too, sending it to addresses that I
never had problem with before. And in fact, I was able to send mail
with attachment to some of my friends this morning, then later, not able
to send a plain email to a Yahoo! group.

I've tried closing the program and restarting it, shutting down the
computer and restarting it, nothing works. The only thing that
consistently will not send is an email with a picture inserted inside
the email. I haven't been able to get one of these out at all.

What could have gone wrong? And where is this temporary file setting
I'm supposed to be checking?

Thanks again for helping.

Sophie

Sophie Doell

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Dec 20, 2006, 8:25:20 PM12/20/06

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on 12/20/2006 6:46 PM Snagglepuss said the following:

> Sophie Doell wrote:
>> This is the message I have been getting randomly when I send emails or
>> try to save a draft (it says "unable to save your message as draft"
>> instead of "sending of message failed" when attempting to save as
>> draft). I can't recall when exactly this started happening, so can't
>> tell what exactly may have caused it. The full error message reads:
>>
>> Sending of message failed. Unable to open the temporary file. Check
>> your "Temporary Directory" setting.
>>
>> Where exactly is the temporary directory setting? How do I fix this
>> problem?
>>
>> Thanks for any help.
>>
>> Sophie
> close the program, then delete all the *.msf files within the mail
> section of your TB profile.
>

I've done this, but the problem still persists. Any other thing to try?
Thanks!

Sophie

Nir

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Dec 20, 2006, 8:31:57 PM12/20/06

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and you have deleted all .msf files when TB is completely ( including
thunderbird.exe process ) closed,right?

pop

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Dec 20, 2006, 8:33:58 PM12/20/06

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Sophie Doell said the following on 12/20/2006 7:24 PM:

check your temp space to see if you are running out of disk space. The
temp directory defaults to:
C:\Documents and Settings\[user-name]\Local Settings\Temp
on XP. Check the free disk space on C: (if that is where temp is) - also
check if access to the temp directory has been hosed.
HTH

--
pop is Mark
I Stopped to think but forgot to start again.
--

Nir

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Dec 20, 2006, 8:38:55 PM12/20/06

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As the error message points to a temporary folder , so here are some
guesses :
In Linux i have found TB creates temporary .eml file in /tmp folder.
In Window , there should be a Temporary folder in which TB use to create
temporary files.
I think you should run disk cleaning and disk checking utilities .

Sophie Doell

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Dec 20, 2006, 9:06:38 PM12/20/06

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on 12/20/2006 8:31 PM Nir said the following:

Yes, I closed the program, and didn't see the thunderbird.exe process
running. Deleted all the *.msf files that I could see in the "mail"
folder. All it did was reset all my folders and downloaded some
duplicate emails into my inbox.

Sophie

Sophie Doell

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Dec 20, 2006, 9:17:57 PM12/20/06

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on 12/20/2006 8:33 PM pop said the following:

Disk space on C: (where the Temp is) is 51 GB, and the size of the Temp
file is 3 MB. Is there a limit to how big a temp file can be?

I don't know how to check to see if access to the temp directory has
been hosed. How do I do that? Thanks!

Sophie Doell

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Dec 20, 2006, 9:34:02 PM12/20/06

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on 12/20/2006 8:38 PM Nir said the following:

I've done a disk clean up earlier, and it didn't work. But I decided to
just tried again anyway, and this time I noticed something that I didn't
delete before called "webClient/Publisher Temporary Files" that was just
56 KB in size. I didn't think much of it then when I did disk clean up
because it's so small, but this time I told Windows to delete it, and lo
and behold, it solved the problem I've been having with Thunderbird! I
sent a couple of test emails to myself, one with a picture inside the
email, and one with attachement, and both came through. I'm also able
to save such emails as drafts. So, it would appear that the problem is
solved!

Thank you so much for all your help! Now I'm just curious about what
exactly happened, and how can I prevent it from happening again?

Sophie

Sophie Doell

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Dec 20, 2006, 9:39:54 PM12/20/06

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on 12/20/2006 9:17 PM Sophie Doell said the following:

Follow up: I did disk clean up and deleted the "WebClient/Publisher
Temporary Files" and now everything is fine. This file was only 56 kb,
so I ignored it earlier when I did disk clean up, but apparently that's
where the problem was after all!

Thanks so much for all your help!

Sophie

bruce

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Jan 13, 2007, 10:39:08 AM1/13/07

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I've been having this problem on Mac OS X 10.3.9 using Thunderbird and
Mozilla. I eventually did a search for all the tmp files. I then looked
at their information and permissions and one was locked up. I clicked
in as admin and changed it. Everything worked fine after that.

Bruce