639460 - PDF attachment allegedly deleted (red cross icon), MIME-type modfied to "text/x-moz-deleted"

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 476400

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[danschlereth]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; de; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Firefox/3.6.15
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; de; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Thunderbird/3.1.9

In several e-mails sent and received by work colleagues and myself, some (but not all) pdf attachments are marked as "deleted" (red cross icon) although they have never actually been deleted. Thus, those attachments can neither be opened nor saved via Thunderbird. However, this phenomenon does not occur within a random webmail application (e.g. GoogleMail, Horde), hence a Thunderbird-specific bug.

A closer look at the source code of the messages in question revealed the following: The MIME-type of the allegedly deleted attachment had been modified to "text/x-moz-deleted" instead of "application/pdf".

Accordingly, the problem could be resolved by editing the source code through the extension "TB-Header-Tools" (see: http://forum.addonsmirror.net/index.php?showtopic=1906&st=0&p=38064&#entry38064). As soon as the MIME-type had been "repaired" by substituting "text/x-moz-deleted" manually with "application/pdf", the attached pdf was readable again.

But: why does Thunderbird mark the pdf attachment as deleted in the first place?
Unfortunately, i couldn't deduct any relation to the method by which the allegedly corrupted pdf files had been generated. So far, i've tried Adobe Acrobat, PDF Creator and CIB PDF Brewer (most recent versions as well as older ones).

It should be obvious how annoying this bug can get for a group of people all using Thunderbird as standard mailing application on their work stations. Any ideas?

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Generate a pdf document with the software of your choice
2. Attach it to an e-mail and send it to an account that can be accessed via Thunderbird
Actual Results:  
In somes cases you might experience the aforementioned bug (pdf attachment accessible only via Webmail, but not in Thunderbird, where the attachement is marked as deleted).

Expected Results:  
PDF attachments should be accessible at all times via Thunderbird (unless they've been deleted before).

The bug occurred on several different pcs with different operating systems (Windows XP & 7). Thus it seems unlikely that the problem should relate to specific user environment configurations...

Comment 1

[Dominique LEGER]

I have the same problem with .doc files

Comment 2

[Dominique LEGER]

Attachment: mail with problematic attachement, Thunderbird

Comment 3

[Dominique LEGER]

Attachment: mail with problematic attachement, Roundcube

Comment 4

[danschlereth]

Edit: I recently discovered that damaged pdf attachments in Thunderbird become accessible again once they have been selected to be forwarded. More precisely, the files can be opened/saved etc. inside the attachment window as re-named temp files. However, those attachments become inaccessible again once they have been forwarded and thus filed into the sent folder.

Comment 5

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Created attachment 519139 [details]
> mail with problematic attachement, Roundcube

multipart/mixed; This is a different issue :-)

Comment 6

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> As soon as the MIME-type had been "repaired" by substituting
> "text/x-moz-deleted" manually with "application/pdf", the attached pdf was
> readable again.


This looks like bug #476400. You may have double-clicked on a deleted *.pdf attachment in the past and then this wrong association was carried over to your 3.x version during migration... I suppose!

A workaround for your situation it's:
Select Tools → Options → Attachments and try to find the entry corresponding to ".pdf" and/or "text/x-moz-deleted". Once you find it, click on the entry to highlight it, then select "Delete Action" from the menu. 

See if this resolves the issue when sending a new message!

If this problem affects also your colleagues, also the colleagues should be ran the workaround!

I hope this help you.

Comment 7

[danschlereth]

Thanks for your suggestion concerning the workaround for bug 476400!

However, i already considered entries in the file "mimetype.rdf". Mine, for example, doesn't contain any entries at all since i always save attachments before opening them directly from e-mails.

Unfortunately, the problem with allegedly damaged/deleted pdfs persists. Also on my colleague's pc, where close Thunderbird, deleted "mimetypes.rdf" and then restarted TB again, thus clearing it of unwanted entries.

Comment 8

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

Also with new messages? (probably oldes can't be fixes by deleting mimetypes.rdf

Comment 9

[rsx11m]

Deleting mimeTypes.rdf from the profile folder should resolve bug 476400 for
any new messages you compose, but old ones are corrupted already with the wrong Content-Type heading and thus won't be affected by that fix.

Comment 10

[danschlereth]

Ok i will try handling new messages once mimeTypes.rdf has been deleted and then report back asap...
Thanks a heap for your hints so far!