241203 - attachment not visible until message loaded

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[El Frigo]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.1; U)
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (20040207)

In the mail messages overview pane initially no icon is shown when there is an
attachment included in the e-mail. Only after selecting the mail message (just
click with the mouse on the message once) the attachment-icon appears.

This happens when using an IMAP account including messages in the "Local Folders".

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open message windows which includes an message with attachment
2 [details] [diff] [review].No attachment icon is shown
3.Click on the message that contains the attachment
4 [details] [diff] [review].The attachment icon is shown

Actual Results:  
Initially no icon was show but it appeared after clicking on the message that
included an attachment.

Expected Results:  
Directly show the attachment icon if a mail-message includes an attachment.

In the example I already clicked on one mail containting an attachment (as shown
by the attachment-icon) after that I clicked on the message above that one and
"voila" an other mail with attachement.

Comment 1

[OstGote!]

See the Mailnews bugs Bug 182720 and Bug 199979. Could be duped???

Comment 2

[Jeremy Tunnell]

I am experiencing the same problem on Thunderbird 0.7 on Windows 2000 using pop
mail.  Email attachment indicator in receive window only appears after the
message is highlighted.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

This is Seamonkey bug 199979, as noted in comment 1.  Maybe it should be duped, 
I don't know if this could be a Thunderbird-only fix.  Confirming for now.

Comment 4

[Tom Potwin]

I had the same thing happen on my system using Thunderbird 0.8 on Windows 98SE. 
It showed up on messages that were imported from Outlook 2000, as well as new 
ones I sent to myself as a test from another computer.

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, we have to read the message before we know it has an attachment. That's
basically working as designed.

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 261157 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Rene Rask]

If this is working as designed the design is buggy.

The attachment flag is not showing the true state of the email then what is the
point of having it? At the very least it should show a question mark if it
doesn't know if an email has an attachment.
Evolution and Squirrelmail don't have this problem so I guess the problem is not
with the imap protocol but with the way Thunderbird handles mail. 
Please fix it in some way that makes sense to users that are not programmers.

Please change from WindowsXP to All since this is not an XP specific problem.

Isn't the dependency on bug 260669 a mistake. I can't see how that relates to
this bug, but I'm not changing it since I don't know enough about it. Someone
with a bit more knowledge please check it.

Comment 8

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

> At the very least it should show a question mark if it
> doesn't know if an email has an attachment.

Cool idea.

Agreed about the bogus dependency, removing.

Comment 9

[orion]

(In reply to comment #7)
> If this is working as designed the design is buggy.
> 
> The attachment flag is not showing the true state of the email then what is the
> point of having it?

I agree with this analysis.  I have Thunderbird on several different computers
for grabbing mail from the same account.  Often times I will have read the mail
from one location, and so I don't "read" the mail from the other computer, I
just mark it read.  This results in the attachment flag never getting set, and
then when I search my emails for "that one email from Fred with an attachment" I
can't find it, because it doesn't show the attachment.

Comment 10

[hrvoje lončar]

i think you should put this bug as "critical", becouse attachment sign this is 
one of very importatnt mail-descriptors. maybe it's hard for coding, but i 
think it's worth. it's stupid to say outlook has this option, but many users 
expect this option by default.

Comment 11

[Piotr Gawrysiak]

Any news about this issue? It seems to be still present in nightly builds - any
chances of this getting fixed in 0.9? This thing the only problem stopping
migration of my users from Outlook (and I heard lots of remarks from my
colleagues in other organizations about this...)...

Comment 12

[David :Bienvenu]

we could set the attachment icon on any message with a content type of
multipart/mixed, by looking for that header. That will cause the attachment icon
to be displayed for any attachment, including v-cards.  What do you think,
Scott? We could make this behaviour optional, but I'm thinking v-cards are not
that common, and most people would probably prefer the false positive...we could
clear the attachment flag on messages with v-cards when the user reads the message.

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: potential fix

this does the basic work...I could add a hidden pref to control this. I suspect
that clicking on a message with a v-card attachment will not clear the
attachment flag because I bet we only set that flag, not clear it, but I'll
check.

Comment 14

[Scott MacGregor]

david, I tried that approach already and the noise level was too high. We had to
revert it back. 

Comment 15

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: proposed fix

This clears the attachment flag when the user reads a message with just a
v-card, and removes the #ifdeffed code from the bayesian spam filter. That code
had too many false positives because it got called for multipart alternative
messages by libmime, but this patch only checks for multipart mixed.

Comment 16

[David :Bienvenu]

fixed on trunk and branch.

Comment 17

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Bug 259674 is expressly about turning *off* the attachment icons for vCards, 
which currently is shown once the message has been opened.  The patch as 
described will actually help that problem, even if it first shows an icon for 
the vCard before the message is opened.
It seems currently that the "message has an attachment" status is cached 
somewhere, like in the .msf -- is that correct?

Comment 18

[David :Bienvenu]

*** Bug 199979 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 19

[Derek Shaw]

just downloaded and tested
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/
which translates as 0.6+ (20041025)

The bug is still in evidence. 

Any idea guidance as to what I missed would be welcome.

Comment 20

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: fix for imap

imap needs to get the content-type header by default in order for this to work
for imap. Both these fixes will be in the *next* nightly build, *not* the
nightly build made before these fixes were checked in.

Comment 21

[David :Bienvenu]

imap fix checked into branch and trunk.

Comment 22

[Piotr Gawrysiak]

I am just testing last nightly build (version 0.6+ (20041026)) and it seems that
this fix works only partially - for most of the messages (both imported from OE
and coming from POP3 server) the paperclip shows properly (for messages which
has not been read but have attachment(s), but for others the behaviour is the
same - and what is worse, it is not possible now to open the attachment (see
attached screenshot). I am almost sure that this is something that has not been
happening before, but I am not sure. It might be the result of some other
changes, perhaps?

Comment 23

[Piotr Gawrysiak]

Attachment: Improper behaviour after last fix

Comment 24

[David :Bienvenu]

I don't see how this fix could have anything to do with that problem.

Comment 25

[Piotr Gawrysiak]

Right, it seems that this nightly build has problems with all atachments - I
tried opening only these where TB did not show the paperclip in unread
message... Sorry for the confusion! There are still however two types of
behaviour - some messages got the paperclip icon in unread state, and others
show the icon only after reading the message. Perhaps someone will be able to
verify this?
I am attaching the headers of the message which did not show the paperclip - as
far I can tell it is nothing special, but maybe it would help somehow...

Comment 26

[Piotr Gawrysiak]

Attachment: Message source - this showed paperclip icon only after being read

Comment 27

[Derek Shaw]

just downloaded and tested Thunderbird version 0.6+ (20041026) from
http://ftp28f.newaol.com/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/
sent a new message to a mailbox on a courier-imap server (with an attachment).
Paperclip attachment symbol still did not show up until the message had been
opened.  This bug is not resolved.

Comment 28

[David :Bienvenu]

the reason it didn't work for that sample message is that the content type is
upper case, and I just look for lower case multipart/mixed...

Comment 29

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: case-insensitve search for multipart/mixed

Comment 30

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 266258 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 31

[Derek Shaw]

Attachment: screenshot showing no paperclip symbol

tbird version 0.9 (20041103)

Comment 32

[David :Bienvenu]

Derek, can you attach or e-mail me a protocol log of a session where new imap
mail was received with an attachment but the attachment icon didn't display
until you clicked on a message. This is working for everyone else that I know
of, so your problem sounds like its specific to your setup.

http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html#imap

Comment 33

[nicolas chevreux]

Using TB 0.9 build 20041111 on Win XP SP1, and this bug is back.
I received today two emails sent with Incredimail to my POP account, and the
paper clip icon did not show any attachment. I clicked on the emails, they had
an attachment (some jpg included in the sig), and the paper clip appeared.
I thought this bug was fixed, but it seems not...

Comment 34

[David Bate]

I installed version 0.9+ (20041113) today and it seems to work here ok.

Comment 35

[Derek Shaw]

This question is directed to David B.  Did my protocol log of the IMAP session
with the courier-IMAP server provide any clues (Additional Comment #32)?

Just to add a detail that never got mentioned, the same Tbird client shows the
attachment symbol (paperclip) before loading the message when it is dealing with
POP mail -- just not for that IMAP server.  The attachment symbol does show up
after loading the IMAP message.  

I'm about to build another IMAP server for another client, and if there's
something about the configuration of the server that I can adjust to make this
work properly, please let me know.  The users of this next courier-IMAP server
will be using the Mozilla suite, which as of 1.7.3, still seems to have this bug.

Comment 36

[David :Bienvenu]

Derek, I lost your log - can you resend it? I sent you e-mail to that affect on
11/8 but maybe you don't see non-bug e-mail on that account?

Comment 37

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

(In reply to comment #35)
> POP mail -- just not for that IMAP server.  The attachment symbol does show up
> after loading the IMAP message.  

I can't reproduce it with Thunderbird version 0.9+ (20041119) and courier-imap 
 3.0.8-3 running under Debian Sarge. When I receive a message, I can immediately
see the attachment symbol.

Comment 38

[Derek Shaw]

For David -- I have sent you under separate cover, to the email address in the
link, the log you requested along with a very illuminating (to me) screen shot.  

From the difference between test #2 and test #1 (in the screen shot not attached
here) I have figured out why I seem to be the only one reporting the bug.

It is because I am using a digital (x.509) pki certificate to sign my messages.
 The signed messages do not show the attachment symbol, the unsigned messages do.

shall I open another bug?

Comment 39

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #38)
> I have figured out why I seem to be the only one reporting the bug.
> 
> It is because I am using a digital (x.509) pki certificate to sign my
> messages.  The signed messages do not show the attachment symbol, the
> unsigned messages do.
> 
> shall I open another bug?

Is this bug 243833?  See also bug 213051, bug 145180.

Comment 40

[David :Bienvenu]

I don't think it's any of those bugs, though bug 145180 is related. The issue is
that the content type is multipart/signed and we don't treat that as having an
attachment (and you'd be unhappy if we did :-) ) I don't see any way to fix this
issue - the content type is our best shot at determining from the headers. The
content type is the same for a signed message with an attachment as a signed
message w/o an attachment and we're back to deciding at message reading time
whether the message has an attachment.

Comment 41

[David :Bienvenu]

*** Bug 273372 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 42

[Worcester12345]

Is this also considered fixed in trunk? Usually, that is what "FIXED" refers to,
but I see this time, it came in with the "fixed-aviary" keyword. Thanks.

Comment 43

[OstGote!]

(In reply to comment #42)
> Is this also considered fixed in trunk?

Should be fixed, see bug 199979 comment 21.

Comment 44

[HJH]

I've experienced this bug since Thunderbird v1.0.7.  It still occurrs with version 1.6a1 (20060119).  My OS is winxp pro x64 (beta).

One difference now is that the message needs More than just a clicking, it must be opened Fully for the attachment indicator to appear.  Recently I counted twenty-six messages in my in box where this was the case for each of them.

Someone important, please reopen this bug.

Comment 45

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

The fix works well for non-signed messages but fails when a message with attached files is signed e.g. pgp. The little file icon will be displayed first when you open the message. I tested with my Linux CVS trunk build version 1.6a1 (20060114).

David, is that a core bug or does it belong to Enigmail? If it's based on core we should reopen or better file a new bug.

Comment 46

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

I have to revert my last comment. This doesn't only appear for signed messages. Today I received some mail delivery warning messages where this issue can be reproduced at any time. I will attach one of them.

Comment 47

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Attachment: Message source where no paperclip is shown until it was read

Comment 48

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

A quick search thru LXR shows that "multipart/report" is not checked for anywhere (altho it's apparently generated as output in a couple places).

Comment 49

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

*** Bug 328723 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 50

[Sascha]

Tested today, in Thunderbird Version 2.0.0.4 (20070604) this bug is still experienced for signed messages but not for unsigned messages. I am using a digital certificate to sign messages.
Should this bug be closed (WONTFIX), after David Bienvenu stated (Comment #40) that there is no way to fix this?

Comment 51

[Nikolay Shopik]

probably should mark it as WONTFIX, per David comment #40

Comment 52

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Bryan, comment 41, comment 40

Comment 53

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

comment 50, comment 40  [can't count, sorry for spam]

Comment 54

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

The original issue was fixed. For signed messages seems wontfix for technical reasons per comment 40. Closing...

Comment 56

[Sri]

Need to reopen this bug.
Im seeing the same issue on TB 3.1.7, on unsigned messages (never tried with signed messages).
My original bug 621011 has all the details in it. Im surprised no one else is seeing this.
Please let me know what logs you need me to provide (and I'd perhaps need a little help figuring out how to extract those logs).

Comment 57

[Sri]

Can someone please re-open this bug? I am unable to change the status.

Comment 58

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #57)
> Can someone please re-open this bug? I am unable to change the status.

This bug shouldn't be re-opened, it was originally fixed in the TB 1.0 timeframe and is unlikely to be your issue. I think your bug was incorrectly duped, and I'll reopen in a bit.

Comment 59

[Worcester12345]

You know, I think I still see this from time to time.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120713 Thunderbird/14.0 ID:20120713141924

Comment 60

[Sergio Callegari]

Still seeing this issue as of 38.2.0

Comment 61

[Sergio Callegari]

Even worse, asking thunderbird to "repair" the folder, makes all the attachment icons disappear.

Please reopen this bug as soon as possible.

Comment 62

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Worcester12345 from comment #59)
> You know, I think I still see this from time to time.

(In reply to Sergio Callegari from comment #61)
> Please reopen this bug as soon as possible.

Bugs which have patches and were fixed a long time ago do not get reopened. Also, commenting in a fixed bug is a recipe for no one noticing your comment.

So you want to be in a different bug. For example bug 1177080

Comment 63

[Sergio Callegari]

But 1177080 looks like the opposite of this one (repairing folder makes spurious attachment icons appear).

Hence, opened new bug 1200262