297662 - Add "Save As then Open" option for attachments

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Galen Swint]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

When receiving attachments, I often want to save the attachment to a specific
place and then immediately open the saved copy. Neither "Save As" nor "Open"
offer this possibility. "Save As then Open" would allow users to save a copy in
the proper locationa and then work with that copy this is a common mode of use
when collaborating on projects - i.e. e-mailing updated documents to a user
which must then be kept with other documents from a project.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Receive e-mail with document attachment
2 [review]. "Save as" to save attachment to in-progress project directory
3. Navigate to the project directory (via cmd line or GUI)
4. Open the document for work



Expected Results:  
1. Receive e-mail with attachment
2 [review]. "Save as then Open" and save document to "\foo\bar\document.txt"
3. T-Bird saves attachment to \foo\bar and then opens \foo\bar\document.txt

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
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Comment 2

[Galen Swint]

I think waiting until after the release of 1.5 is appropriate for this bug given
that it is a feature enhancement. However, I do not want it to just die on the
vine without any debate.

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

related to bug 220808

Comment 4

[Chris Evans]

I had made the point that in 1.5 I seemded to be able to "save and open" attachments that had associated programs (in windoze).  See bug 319023.  I would really like to see this functionality made available in current versions of Thunderbird and I'm very surprised that this seems to be such a static bug.  Surely Galen Swint and I are not the only ones who would like this functionality.  As I said in bug 319023, I lose quite a bit of time each day having to track manually to a saved attachment and open it.  These days that significant lost time!

Do hope the TB team will take this up and implement it.  TIA. Chris

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

wanted‑thunderbird3-

Comment 6

[Chris Evans]

I have just received an Email that says:
"Thomas D. <[e-mail]> changed:
           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Blocks|                            |579473"

But I can't see any real change here except perhaps that this has been put for someone to take and implement.  (IS that what has happened?)

I am concerned that the TB project seems to me to be drifting into a state in which its survival is endangered and changes that are major, potentially interesting, but, as implemented disastrous are implemented and security and minor bug fixes happen but there is no evidence of serious strategic ability to move the project and program on.  The changes that could be good are (1) the shift to a heavy SQL databasing of messages that could hugely improve searching for those of us who have huge Email archives but which have not yet delivered a good search interface and have slowed the program down to a crawl at times, and (2) the completely mad and almost universally derided shift to a tabbed interface.

We need to see someone is really thinking ahead as the world becomes more and more Email dependent and turning TB into a genuinely supportive tool. That means diary integration, ability to speed up anything that helps (this little request, now five (yes FIVE) years old and things that would enable us to flag messages for attention in some period of time, ability to put searchable notes and categories on them, allocate them to work themes etc.  It looks to me as if Zoot is starting to look like an example of how Emailers could evolve into integrated work support systems.  Meanwhile, please lets have this, for big attachments I see an attachment handling window that is clearly like the downloads window from Firefox flash past, all I really need is the opportunity to hold that and click to open a saved attachment, or even to chose to bypass that and open directly.  Honestly, I don't think it's a big programming challenge.  I'll pay 50 quid personally toward it being implemented as I don't want TB to be superceded for me by something better that isn't open source.

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Chris, thank you for your interest in and concern about the TB project!
I'm a volunteer assisting with bug triage of an open source project, so no obligations whatsover...

(In reply to Chris Evans from comment #6)
> I have just received an Email that says:
> "Thomas D. <[e-mail]> changed:
>            What    |Removed                     |Added
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>              Blocks|                            |579473"
> 
> But I can't see any real change here except perhaps that this has been put
> for someone to take and implement.  (IS that what has happened?)

No. Check "Assigned to:" field above, it's still "nobody".
I simply added this bug to list of bugs in a meta bug called with the alias name "attachuxtracker" (bug 579473). Which makes it a bit easier for people who might want to work on it to find this bug. It also makes it easier to judge the importance of this bug compared to other bugs in the attachment area (and on that scale, this bug imho wouldn't rank very high).

> I am concerned that the TB project seems to me to be drifting into a state
> in which its survival is endangered [snip]

Even though imho not little of your extensive comment might be relevant or true, bugzilla.bmo.org (bmo) and this bug unfortunately is not the right place to voice such concerns. Alternative places to voice your concerns might be found at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/CommunicationChannels, e.g. Thunderbird on getsatisfaction, or perhaps an appropriate newsgroup from http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/
Furthermore, pls don't forget there are thousands of other important issues that might have a higher priority than this request for feature enhancement.

> Meanwhile,
> please lets have this, for big attachments I see an attachment handling
> window that is clearly like the downloads window from Firefox flash past,
> all I really need is the opportunity to hold that and click to open a saved
> attachment, or even to chose to bypass that and open directly.  Honestly, I
> don't think it's a big programming challenge.  I'll pay 50 quid personally
> toward it being implemented as I don't want TB to be superceded for me by
> something better that isn't open source.

You can change your settings to keep TB's download manager open after downloading attachments:

1) Tools > Options > Advanced > Config Editor
2) In about:config's filter box, type download.manager (with a dot in the middle!)
3) please toggle the following setting to 'false'
browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone -> false
4) confirm whatever needs confirmation

Most of the problem solved (and dreaming of the 50 quid...:)

Comment 8

[brendel oliver]

More then 10 years after the first request by Galen, I would still be very much interested by the option to save and open with one click.
Thanks for considering this
Cheers

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Many of the comments here testify that the main motivation for this request is the fact that TB makes it far too difficult to open the location containing the just saved attachment, and to open the saved attachment itself, too. By default, we don't even offer any intuitive access to the download manager, and it's not showing after downloads. The entire attachment downloading experience leaves a lot to desire.

For the moment, this looks like the only way to handle the scenario of this bug:
Save attachment to desired location. After saving, open Saved Files tab by Ctrl+J (or from tools menu). Double-clicking on the file will open it from the saved location. Alternatively, right-click on the file and click "Open containing folder", which will also preselect the file in Windows Explorer, so just hitting ENTER will open it from original location. You may want to keep the saved files tab open always, otherwise Ctrl+J from any tab will take you back there. Btw, Ctrl+J works in FF, too.

Comment 10

[brendel oliver]

OK, the solution seems reasonable (actually it's the way I had found very rapidly to do it). I had also found the config preference which allows to keep the download manager open after downloading ....
Thanks for the infos anyway
Cheers

Comment 13

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from comment #9)

By default, we don't even offer any intuitive access to the
download manager, and it's not showing after downloads. The entire
attachment downloading experience leaves a lot to desire.

I've filed that 5 years back as bug 1351219.