Images and related content in HTML messages

→ relates to section: Thunderbird 5.0 – New Features and Changes#Images and links in HTML messages

Attachments in a “multipart/related” context (such as images inserted into the message body itself, but also items like PDF files which Thunderbird cannot display inline) are no longer provided in the attachment pane even if View → Message Body As → Plain Text is chosen [24].

A hidden preference mailnews.display.show_all_body_parts_menu has been introduced, which – if set to “true” – provides a new menu item View → Message Body As → All Body Parts. Select this to present all MIME parts of the message as attachments, which will be displayed if they can be shown inline unless View → Display Attachments Inline in unchecked. This allows to (a) save again embedded content from the attachment pane, and (b) access attachments in a malformed message which otherwise would stay invisible.

There is also an add-on [25] which can be installed to enable the additional menu point. It was mostly created for easier identification and documentation of that feature [26]. Note that the add-on won’t work in versions prior to 8.0.

This Thunderbird (v8.0) suddenly started losing attachments. They disappeared from old and new messages alike but not from all messages. Sometimes the attachment vanished right before the user’s eyes, a really impressive behaviour! Along with them the attachments indicating paperclip disappeared as well.

Research led me to the post above and the given solution actually worked for Thunderbird 8.

The missing paperclip in the mailbox view also reappeared, although it took a while and/or a couple of restarts and/or installing the mentioned add-on, not sure which, although uninstalling the add-on leaves the paperclip in place.

For more, follow the discussion “missing attachment in TB 8.0″ in http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2358833.

No checkbox to remember passwords

It can happen that you will find no checkbox in Thunderbird to remember passwords. To change this, you will need to edit the prefs.js file, located in the Thunderbird profile folder.

1. Close Thunderbird and open the prefs.js file in Notepad or another editor (make a backup copy of prefs.js first, as a precaution).
2. Find the following line: user_pref(”signon.rememberSignons”, false);
3. Change the value from false to true.
4. Close the Notepad or editor window and save changes.
5. On the next startup of Thunderbird you should find the checkbox for remembering the password in the password manager.

Instead of editing prefs.js, you can change the same setting via about:config.

I am a happy Mozilla Thunderbird & Lightning user, under both Windows and Linux. I use MyPhoneExplorer to synchronize Contacts and Calendars with my Android phone and things have been going smoothly for a while now. So much so that I’ve been able to abandon Microsoft Outlook! But what was I to do when Thunderbird stopped remembering passwords?

In all fairness, maybe it didn’t happen out of the blue. It might be after modifying the IMAP server of an account or because the server wasn’t reachable for a while. At that point a dialog asked for the password and when retrying the trusted saved one failed several times, I had to retype it to connect successfully. However, from then on Thunderbird kept asking for this account’s password on every startup and there was no “Remember” checkbox available any more.

Thankfully, a quick search led me to the above MozillaZine article. This extract worked and the “Remember” checkbox is available again. I can only add that the about:config method doesn’t even require a restart to take effect. No more password requests for me