340662 - Thunderbird doesn't open attachments with the proper program

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[mdavila]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4

Hi,

I recently realized that Thunderbird 1.5.0.* seems to have a bug.

I usually receive attachments that contain a Microsoft Excel file or a JPG file.

But if I receive and try to open an Excel file (*.xls) I will have to choose the "Open with" Excel.exe otherwise Thunderbird will try to open it with Firefox,  causing a crash.

The same happens if the last file I opened was a (*.xls) and I receive a new JPG attachment,  Thunderbird will try to open it with Excel and not Firefox.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Receive an email attached an Excel file
2.Open the attachment directly from Thunderbird
3.Receive a second email attached a JPG file
4.Open the attachment directly from Thunderbird
5.Close Thunderbird
6.Open Thunderbird again
7.Receive an email attached an Excel file
8.Try to open it directly and you will see that Thunderbird will try to use Firefox to open the (*.xls) file.
Actual Results:  
Firefox or Excel will stop working.  Or they will show an error.  Or sometimes Thunderbird will crash.


My computer description:
Windows 98 SE (English) 4.10.22222a
Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 (English)
Microsoft Excel 2000 (Spanish)

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

When you click on one of these attachments that are causing problems, you *always* get the box?  And the "Do automatically..." checkbox is disabled?

If Yes to both questions, the basic problem is that the message has been sent with a generic MIME type, application/octet-stream, rather than the specific image/jpeg or application/x-vnd-msexcel.  You can check this by viewing the source for the message containing the attachment -- altho, it's possible that the problem is from an earlier instance of receiving such an attachment with an earlier version of the program that didn't handle application/octet-stream as well as it should have.

Look in  Tools | Options | Attachments,  View & Edit Actions.  Are there 
entries for .JPG or .XLS?  Are they configured correctly?  If you select 
"Change Action" on the entry for an extension, the window that pops up will 
show the MIME type to which it's associated -- are these correct?  If any of 
the entries has "application/octet-stream" associated with it, delete that entry; then restart TB (just to be safe) and try reopening the attachment.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Reporter (mdavila) -- did comment 1 help solve your problem?

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

No response from reporter  =>  Invalid (insufficient information)
Reporter, feel free to reopen, but provide a response to comment 2.