243975 - [Mac] Unable to save attachment using "Open" or "Save As"

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Brion Vibber]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040517 Camino/0.8b
Build Identifier: version 0.6+ (20040518)

Using the 'Save' or 'Save All...' options from the context menu in the message
pane's attachment list or the File/Attachment menu fails with this error:
"Unable to save the attachment. Please check your file name and try again later."

Ugly workaround: telling it to "open" the attachment, then choosing the option
to save from the dialog box, works correctly. For attached images shown inline,
the 'Save as' context menu item on the inline display also works.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get a message with an attachment.
2. Right-click on its name in the attachment list, 'Save as'
3. Choose a location and name to save it under, click OK

Actual Results:  
"Unable to save the attachment. Please check your file name and try again later."

Expected Results:  
Should save the file.

Mac OS X 10.3.3, default Pinstripe theme. Tried both current trunk build and 0.6
with same problem. Messages are on IMAP server, but if I first copy the message
to a local folder the same thing happens.

Comment 1

[borfig]

This bug is reproducable on Windows as well.
Possibly on Linux (will check).

Comment 2

[Matthew Darwin]

This bug is reproducible on Linux as well.

Thunderbird version 0.8 (20040917) - Debian

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

Is this any kind of attachment, every attachment, or just certain ones? Is the
attachment displayed inline or not?

Comment 4

[Matthew Darwin]

I haven't narrowed it down, but definately .xls, .ppt and .doc attachments. 
Probably anything that cannot be displayed inline.

When e-mailing myself an attachment of foo.txt there is no problem, but
e-mailing myself foo.xls there is.

This test case done on: Thunderbird version 0.6 (20040519)  (Fedora Core 1)

Comment 5

[borfig]

Tested on Thunderbird v0.8 on Gentoo Linux 2004.2, Win2000Pro and WinXPHome.
Seems to work OK, checked with doc, rar, and pdf.

Comment 6

[Matthew Darwin]

Tested again on Debian Thunderbird 0.8 and .doc files definately don't work.

Not sure if it is something in my preferences or what.  The profile I'm using
came from Mozilla 0.something whenever mail seemed stable.  It's at least 1 year
old.

Comment 7

[adrian godwin]

Fails for me on WinXP Pro, TB 0.8. In addition, dragging and dropping 
the attachment to the desktop results in the same 'cannot save' box,
but this cannot be cleared - in fact, no controls respond and the app 
has to be killed with the task manager.

The mail message is on an Exchange server, accessed with IMAP. 

I have had a very similar problem with Mozilla mail, and the same
workaround helps with TB : first, move the mail message into a
local folder. The attachment can then be treated normally.

Comment 8

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

using today's Mac 2004111902-0.9, the "Open" and "Save As" context menu items
are always disabled for me, but I can use "Save All."

this no longer seems to be a problem on windows or linux.

Comment 9

[Scott MacGregor]

any JS errors sarah?

Comment 10

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

no, there isn't any js console output.

Comment 11

[Scott MacGregor]

sarah, what kind of mime type are you trying to open? I just tested on
yesterday's mac build and for a couple image attachments, Open and Save were
properly enabled in both the context menu in the attachment pane and for the
File / Attachments menu. 

Comment 12

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

I tried this out with a .pdf, .html and .png file and "open" and "save as"
remain disabled in the context menu. (I viewed the message in both the message
pane and the standalone window.)

is the mime info (from viewing the source) the same as the Content-Type? if so,
this is what I see for those files:

.png file - image/png; x-mac-type="0"; x-mac-creator="0"; name="toolbar1.png"

.html file - text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1; name="MailNews_Newsgroup_BFT.html"

.pdf file - application/pdf; x-unix-mode=0666; name="result.pdf"

Comment 13

[Scott MacGregor]

sarah, if you go to Preferences, Attachments are there any pre-filled File types
on that screen for your profile? 

Comment 14

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

there aren't any pre-filled file types in the Attachment panel of Preferences.

Comment 15

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Using the 12/3 nightly build, I still see the "Open" and "Save As" greyed out in
the context menu on the mac. On windows these menu items are enabled. Since you
can still "Save All" on the Mac, minusing for the 1.0 release.

Comment 16

[Scott MacGregor]

I still can't get my mac build into a state where this happens. 

Comment 17

[Brion Vibber]

Attachment: Screen shots of the context menu for attachments, showing disabled items

I've been using Thunderbird only for newsgroups lately so haven't dealt much
with attachments, but loaded up mail in 1.0RC1 and sent an attachment to myself
just to test. Currently, for me, at least for this one message, saving
attachments *does* work. I certainly do not see the error message I originally
reported.

However there is an oddity with the context menu (see attached screen shots).
If you control-click on an item, you get a context menu where "Open" and
"Save..." are grayed out, and "Save all..." is active. The "Open" and "Save..."
items are only activated if you first click on the item without control held
down, and then control-click it. This is at best very non-intuitive.

If I leave the attachment selected and load up another message with an
attachment, and control-click over the attachment area, I get a context menu
with active "Open" and "Save..." items *for the attachment in the first
message* instead of the one I'm actually control-clicking on. To get the right
attachment to come up, I have to (non-control) click on it.

Tested version 1.0RC1 (20041201) on Mac OS X 10.3.6. Messages are in an IMAP
folder; attachments were PNG image, Word doc, and PDF, as MIME attachments sent
from Apple Mail. I can provide the raw source of a couple sample messages if
required.

Comment 18

[Carlos E. Knippschild]

I seem to have the same problem (or something lik it) from version 0.8 to 1.0,
under Windows. Generally it happends for me when I get an email message with
another email message as an attachment to the first, which contains, for
instance, some images. Something like:

- Fist Message
    - (Attach) Second Message
        - (Attach) Image1.jpg
        - (Attach) Image2.jpg

When the 1st message is opened, the 2nd is shown as an attachment (not inlined).
Everything is fine.

When the 2nd is opened, by double-clicking it's attach icon, the images are
shown as an attachment but -- that's the first weird part -- the 2nd message
itself is shown as an attachment. Generally the images are not shown inlined.

When I try to use the comands Save (with one of the attachments) or Save All,
neither work. Only by double-clicking the desired attachment I may access it. If
I open the 2nd message shown as an attachment to itself, a new window is opened
with the same contents.

It becames very boring when you get a message like this one with lots of
attached files: you have to open each one with it's associated editor and save it.

Comment 19

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #17)
> Created an attachment (id=167795)
> Screen shots of the context menu for attachments, showing disabled items
Brion Vibber, your case has no relation to this bug, I think.
 - When attached item is not selected yet, context menu is "Save All" only.
 - When attached item is selected, context menu contains "Save As".
Then your request sounds "Display 'Save As' even if item is not selected, when
number of attachment is one".
Is it right?

(In reply to comment #18)
Carlos E. Knippschild, your problem is Bug 203570.
This is Mozilla bug, Thunderbird bug for this is bug 241267, but will be DUPed
according to Bugzilla Product/Component structure change.
See Bug 269826 for attached e-mail(message/rfc822 part) related problems.

Comment 20

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #12)
> .png file - image/png; x-mac-type="0"; x-mac-creator="0"; name="toolbar1.png"
> .pdf file - application/pdf; x-unix-mode=0666; name="result.pdf"

Sounds problem when unknown parameter in Content-Type header.
sairuh, can you check whether problem occurs or not if these unknown parameter
is removed or moved after name parameter.
 (1) Make a new folder(say "TEST")
 (2) Copy the mail to "TEST" folder.
     Then compact folder, to make sure one mail data ony.     
 (3) Shutdown Thunderbird.
 (4) Edit "TEST" file(not "TEST.msf") by text editor.
   (a) Change Content Type header
       image/png; x-mac-type="0"; x-mac-creator="0"; name="toolbar1.png"
       ==>
       image/png; name="toolbar1.png"; x-mac-type="0"; x-mac-creator="0";
       If Content-Disposition header also has these parameters,
       change this header too.
 (5) Delete "TEST.msf" file
 (6) Restart Thunderbird.
 (7) What will happen?
     How about when x-mac-type and x-mac-creator parameters are removed?

Comment 21

[Brion Vibber]

(In reply to comment #19)
> (In reply to comment #17)
> > Created an attachment (id=167795)
> > Screen shots of the context menu for attachments, showing disabled items
> Brion Vibber, your case has no relation to this bug, I think.

As I said the original problem which I reported (errors on save) seems to be fixed. The last ten 
comments or so seem to discuss something separate from the bug which I reported, but which seems 
to be consistent with what I'm experiencing now.

Perhaps this should be split into a separate bug, and this one marked fixed.

>  - When attached item is not selected yet, context menu is "Save All" only.
>  - When attached item is selected, context menu contains "Save As".

Correct. The first problem is that requiring the user to select the attachment explicitly before opening a 
context menu is contrary to standard user interface behavior. Typically, activating a context menu (eg 
right-clicking) over a distinct item (such as an image or an attachment icon) when there is no previous 
selection will either select the item as part of the action, or will open an item-specific context menu 
without selecting it (for instance, right-clicking on images in a web browser).

> Then your request sounds "Display 'Save As' even if item is not selected, when
> number of attachment is one".
> Is it right?

No, the number of items should not be relevant. There are two distinct problems:
1) When right-clicking directly on an unselected item, it is not selected and the context menu does not 
relate to the object clicked on.
2) When switching from one message to another, it is not un-selected.

The result of 1 is that the context menu unexpected has the "Open" and "Save" menu items grayed out, 
with no clue to the poor user what he or she did wrong.

The result of the combination of 1 and 2 is that if you manage to left-click on an attachment in one 
message, then open another message, opening a context menu for an attachment actually shows 
"Open" and "Save" menu items which operate on an attachment to another message which is no longer 
even shown on screen -- completely unexpected.

Since this does not seem to be clearly related to the bug I originally reported, perhaps it should be spun 
off to a separate bug report. However, it does seem to be what's been discussed in the comments on 
this bug since comment #8, and since I could confirm it I presented more details on the problem as I 
saw it.

Comment 22

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #21)
> >  - When attached item is not selected yet, context menu is "Save All" only.
> >  - When attached item is selected, context menu contains "Save As".
> Correct.

Oh, you are the bug opener, "Different problem" is not yours, other's instead. 
Sorry for my misunderstandig.

Comment 23

[Carlos E. Knippschild]

(In reply to comment #19)
> (In reply to comment #18)
> Carlos E. Knippschild, your problem is Bug 203570.
> This is Mozilla bug, Thunderbird bug for this is bug 241267, but will be DUPed
> according to Bugzilla Product/Component structure change.
> See Bug 269826 for attached e-mail(message/rfc822 part) related problems.
 
Sorry... I'm not very used to Bugzilla yet and, as I read "Thundebird" in the
product field, I thought this was the good one. But I still didn't understand
"how" whould I know this bug refers to Mozilla (and not to Thunderbird)...

And should I do something about my last entry (describing the bug)? I mean,
should I copy it to one of this other bugs you mentioned? I took a look at them
and just couldn't figure out...

Thanks!

Comment 24

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #23)
See "View Bug Activity" of Bug 203570.

Comment 25

[Scott MacGregor]

we get into this case on the mac when the attachment in question is not selected
when you bring up the context menu (by holding down the Ctrl + Mouse Click). We
do not recognize that there is a selected attachment so we disable the menu items.

The fix may be to make our attachment widget smart enough to select an entry on
shift-click.

Comment 26

[Mark E.]

I'm using latest OS X (10.4.3 w/ all updates applied) and latest FireFox Macintosh nightly version:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060104 Firefox/1.6a1

I have a similar/related problem in that I can't save ANY images using "Save Image As..." in the contextual menu (right-click) menu.  It is possible to drag to the desktop from the browser, but when using the menu command nothing happens, ie. it won't even bring up the appropriate dialog box.

I have noted this problem for a few weeks (a few different nightly builds), at first thought it just may be some protection of image downloading from the sites, but it is occurring for all images... in the midst of finals and holidays slacked a little in reporting..

Note there are many problems with image saving

Comment 27

[Mark E.]

Should also note, other peculiarities in downloading other files.  Went to a site and clicked on link to download a movie clip...thought site was buggy, never saw any addition of the file to my download manager list, but later found the file that I thought I never got in my download folder...

thanks

Comment 28

[Mark E.]

I noticed that at the bottom of the Downloads Manager Tool that the "all files downloaded to:" was followed by a line the length of the space where the folder name should be.  I went into prefs and reassigned the proper target folder, and it restored my ability to download files, both saving files like the nightly builds to this folder, AS WELL AS now being able to save images through the contextual menu!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Makes no sense, but all dialogs/saves are  now working as expected.



Further:  Went to 
(In reply to comment #27)
> Should also note, other peculiarities in downloading other files.  Went to a
> site and clicked on link to download a movie clip...thought site was buggy,
> never saw any addition of the file to my download manager list, but later found
> the file that I thought I never got in my download folder...
> 
> thanks
> 

Comment 29

[Mark E.]

I am confused by the above being/seeming to be about both Thunderbird and FF, but as far as FF goes, all save as functions and dialog boxes seem to work for me...and since the thread is 2.5 years old perhaps we can mark this "works for me"?

Comment 30

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Still seen on Mac?

Comment 31

[Jay Moran (jaym/lazvon)]

Works for me in: version 3.0a2pre (2008071103).

I can CTRL-CLICK (right click) on a single attachment and "Save As..." or I can CTRL-CLICK on the gray background "attachment box" and do a "Save All..."

And I guess I need to open another bug for the problems with just double-clicking a file in the attachment box. Looks like there are two threads, one for the actual saving and one for the opening. The saving thread doesn't complete before the opening thread, so it is VERY rare that I can actually double click a file and have it open and instead just get a "file doesn't exist" ... until I go find the file after it has saved and double click it directly. Another bug though...

Comment 32

[Jay Moran (jaym/lazvon)]

Bug 434638 was already opened as described in comment 31, however it is currently labeled as Firefox and I believe it is a Core. I've added my comments there in case anyone would like to investigate.

Comment 33

[andreas.fischlin]

I am afraid this problem is still present, at least in the version 2.0.0.14 (20080421) of ThunderBird I daily use. 

Bug description: I can never open an attachment using the menu command "File -> Attachments -> <my attachment> -> Open". If I try it, I receive always a "Download Error" Alert "could not be saved, because an unknown error occurred. Try saving to a different location".  From watching closely what is going on on my machine, I diagnose that the underlying problem is still the following: ThunderBird does not honor my global preference  for Attachments "Save all attachments to this folder:" (Bug 286094). Note also, I have reported this problem already quite a while ago, I guess it is years by now. BTW, I am working with Mac OS X 10.5.4 but I am observing this buggy behavior of ThunderBird since a long time with many ThunderBird versions and many Mac OS X systems, i.e. 10.3.x and 10.4.x.

Some details: I am using the ThunderBird preference "Save all attachments to this folder:" on my system and instruct ThunderBird to use a specific ThunderBird only folder for attachments. However, ThunderBird ignores this preference and uses instead a global preference, i.e. a system-wide setting pointing at the global download folder. Newer Mac OS X systems do not even allow anymore to edit that global preference. What is a bit special on my system is the fact that there is some folder action that operates on that system-wide download folder. That folder action interferes with ThunderBird's attachment handling. That's why I want to use ThunderBird's preference to use another folder for downloading attachments. 
Please note, it is clearly ThunderBird's fault that I encounter these difficulties, since ThunderBird should never use that global folder for attachments once I have instructed it to use another one. I carefully tested the behavior of ThunderBird once more. I found again that it creates files with random names such as 'gfi0hrjy.doc' in that system-wide download folder when I try to open a Word attachment. I have reset the ThunderBird preference "Save all attachments to this folder:" to no avail. With option "Ask me where to save every file" I encounter the exact same "Download Error"-alerts. Returning to the wanted option does not make any difference. (Note, I have no "Download Action" specified for Word .doc attachments, the type of attachments I made the tests with and encounter the same buggy behavior for other attachments as well).

Conclusion: ThunderBird should honor it's own preference for Attachments and really save all attachments in the specified folder. Then it might be that ThunderBird could actually properly handle attachments. However, unless this old ThunderBird bug  of not honoring its own preference is fixed, I believe it would be a mistake to close this Bug 243975 – [Mac] Unable to save attachment using "Open" or "Save As".

Related bugs are: 
Bug 286094 -- Save all attachments to this folder" preference option ignored (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286094)
Bug 238789 -- Opening attachments should not also save copy to desktop (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=238789)

Comment 34

[andreas.fischlin]

I have forgotten to mention: FireFox does honor the preference "Downloads: Save files to..." since version 2.x. It does still honor this in the latest 3.0 according to my tests I just made. 

Conclusion: Don't search too far. ThunderBird should really now get the long overdue fix for Bug 286094 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286094) and then only does it become worth-looking into bugs 238789 and 243975.

Comment 35

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Is this REALLY Mac only?  summary still has [Mac] but comments vary

comment 25 seems to describe bug 294671 / bug 317699

Comment 36

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Brion (reporter),  Andreas.fischlin, do you still see whatever this bug is about?

I think we should close it anyway, as explained below...

Brion (Reporter) says in comment 21:
> As I said the original problem which I reported (errors on save) seems to be fixed.
But right-click/selection problems of comment 21 (which seems what this bug has morphed into) have also been fixed/wfm:

Per screenshot attachment 167795 [details], comment 25, (and compatible with comment 0), this bug occurs if you do *not* select the attachment before right-clicking.

Several such right-click focus/selection issues have been "resolved":

Bug 317699 was resolved wfm in 2009-07.
Bug 294671 has had no confirming comments since 2010-02 and is in the process of resolving wfm.
Bug 533921 was fixed in 2010-05.
Bug 372956 was resolved wfm in 2011-09, probably fixed by bug 630759 (fixed 2011-08).

Furthermore, bug 630759 completely reworked attachment pane, so design and behaviour are now different from screenshot attachment 167795 [details].

Comment 18 about nested attached messages, if still present as a bug, is certainly covered by other bugs.

Comment 33 by andreas.fischlin might still be a bug, but it cannot be handled here, needs its own bug if we don't have one already. Problem of Comment 33 has two aspects imo:
After setting "Save files to: C:\myfolder"...
- when opening attachments, TB will still create temporary files in download locations outside myfolder
- when saving or detaching attachments, it's very hard, almost impossible from current UI to make use of that preset folder (myfolder). Only double-click and perhaps, irritatingly, "open" from context menu will actually save to myfolder. So e.g. an obvious omission is that "Save all" button will NOT use the predefined location (myfolder), but always ask for custom folder instead.

Anyway, afasics, all of these problems do not belong here.

This bug is very messy, and most of the problems are most likely gone, and anything which is still seen would require new bugs if we don't have them already/still on record.

So I'd strongly recommend to close this bug with an appropriate resolution, probably this:

Worksforme per reporter's comment 21, and comment 36 (this comment).

Comment 37

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Ops, didn't want to resolve yet...

Comment 38

[Brion Vibber]

Yeah, haven't seen this in years, fine to close out.

Comment 39

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Worksforme per reporter's comment 21, comment 38, and my comment 36.

Thanks Brion for reporting back so quickly, that's great!
Still enough of live bugs out there, so there's a strong interest in removing dead wood ;)

Comment 40

[andreas.fischlin]

I stopped using Thunderbird because of too buggy handling of attachments. Although I am in favor of open source software, if it behaves this buggy for such a long time, I could not afford to waist so much time fiddling with attachments when competitive software, e.g. Mail from Apple, handles attachments very well and reliably.

Therefore I am afraid I am not able to answer the specifc questions raised here and addressed specifically to me. However, I am using FireFox and inasmuch the two applications use similar software to handle file downloading, some of the observations I made, some of the comments I made, and some of the suggestions I made for resolving this issue may nevertheless apply.

Comment 41

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to andreas.fischlin from comment #40)
> I stopped using Thunderbird because of too buggy handling of attachments.
> Although I am in favor of open source software, if it behaves this buggy for
> such a long time, I could not afford to waist so much time fiddling with
> attachments when competitive software, e.g. Mail from Apple, handles
> attachments very well and reliably.
> 
> Therefore I am afraid I am not able to answer the specifc questions raised
> here and addressed specifically to me. However, I am using FireFox and
> inasmuch the two applications use similar software to handle file
> downloading, some of the observations I made, some of the comments I made,
> and some of the suggestions I made for resolving this issue may nevertheless
> apply.

Thanks for your interest. The reporter states his problem is gone, so this bug report hall remain closed. As for your remaining issues, a partial quote from comment 36 "Comment 33 by andreas.fischlin might still be a bug, but it cannot be handled here, needs its own bug if we don't have one already. Problem of Comment 33 has two aspects imo:"