Thunderbird hangs on send saying "attaching"

[papasik]

Ver 17.0.7 - replying or forwarding messages with attachments always fails. Composing set to plain text.

In Ver.3 working on the same mail database same operation never fails. Same composing as plain text.

No obvious workaround.

Win7 Ult 64bit Eng

[niico100]

+1

This has been happening to me for years.

It's always when I reply to someone with an image in their signature.

It just meant a very important email wasn't sent when I thought it had (sitting there on 'attaching')- which lead to me *losing a client*.

I am now actively looking to move away from Thunderbird just because of this issue. Anyone know any good alternatives - or a fix for this?

Mozilla - you really need to address this, and right now.

[DanRaisch]

Except...we're not Mozilla. This forum is not run by or formally associated with Mozilla. We're an independent user community.

[SiO2]

Hello Forum,
I'm using the Italian version of TB for two years now and I'm experiencing this problem from some versions now. I'm currently running TB 17.0.6 over OpenSUSE 12.2 but same problem did occur also on Ubuntu.
It seems that - in my case - the attaching problem happens when the composition of the message lasts longer than a few minutes, no matter what content: with or without images, with or without attachments... TB hangs on "creazione allegato" that is "attaching" in English - I suppose after attempting to autosave - and the only way out for me is to close the message without sending/saving and compose it again. Sending of this second message exactly identical to the previous one always works perfectly...
I'm sure the two messages are identical since before to close the first one I copy to the clipboard the text I've added to the email to which I'm replying, then I close the message without saving, I start a new reply to the same email and paste the text from the clipboard.
Following a suggestion found here I've now tried to disable the autosave option, I'll let you know if it works...

UPDATE
8 days with autosave disabled and the problem never happened again. Keep monitoring...

[Scott56]

I didn't read every single message in this topic, but I have what I believe is additional information about the problem.

I will sometimes be replying to a message that has images embedded in the signature, and of course, I experience the Attaching problem.

The funny thing is, the images are there when I first start replying, but if I don't finish composing the message quickly, they disappear, replaced with the missing image box. Those missing images then cause the problem.

The last autosaved draft message contains the images.

It has something to do with other stuff I'm doing in Thunderbird. Or maybe stuff my phone does with that mailbox, which then has to get refreshed in T-bird. Or some random background event that has nothing to do with what I'm doing.

I just watched as the images in the reply composition window disappeared before my eyes. I don't know what it was that triggered it. I had the composition window open for several minutes, and then the images just disappeared, replaced with the missing-image boxes. While I watched! After that, it wouldn't autosave in Drafts either.

I'm going to try to record the screen as it happens. Look for a future post with that video.

[Scott56]

Following up on my last message, the images disappear upon the *second* autosave to Drafts. I see the message at the bottom saying it is saving, and then right before my eyes, the embedded images go blank. I changed the Autosave interval to 1 so that it would happen a lot faster. I'll work on getting video.

[Erirenort]

... and then right before my eyes, the embedded images go blank ...

Hi Scott56,

this vanishing before my eyes never occured to me, but often the autosave feature freezes TB for a long time, and not for some seconds, but up to minutes. When the autosave goes nuts (saying 'attaching' and nothing else, like described in the earlier posts of this thread), then even composing ends within the autosave period, as TB then is hanging infinitely and must be killed.

So this "vanishing feature" seems to me something specific to your machine ...
Are you talking about a phone (android?) version of TB, or of Thunderbird in its Windows flavor?

[Scott56]

I've spent considerable time getting this to reproduce reliably. For your entertainment is a narrated screen capture. Perhaps this will help the developers arrive at a fix. Thank you. It is fairly low resolution, but viewable.

http://youtu.be/mjEld6warOA

[Scott56]

I understand that Thunderbird is a volunteer effort. There was a time when I would have been able to get involved in the developer community and fix this myself. My skills are no longer up to the task, but I did spend the time to demonstrate these two long-discussed problems and how to reproduce them.

That should make it much easier for someone who does understand the code to figure out what is wrong. Sure, I can disable Autosave, but that feature has saved my butt on more than one occasion, so I'm reluctant to turn it off.

If you haven't already watched the video I posted in the previous message, take a look. Even if you can't fix Thunderbird, just seeing those images vanish into thin air is very entertaining.

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy Scott56,

if you have a reliable STR [Steps To Reproduce], then perhaps you could enter a bug in bugzilla about it. even if there is already one for that particular problem [and i am confident there is but i can't find it right now], it will help by providing a repeatable STR. if yours is found to be a dupe, it will be marked as such and you can then add your STR to the older bug.

the biggest problem with this glitch is the lack of a clear and repeatable STR. [*sigh ...*] none of the problems seem to happen to me and the various STRs don't seem to work for my setup.

where to enter a bug for tbird ...
Bugzilla Main Page

the "file a bug" button will walk you thru a fairly easy process. if you do file a bug, please post a link to it back here so others can follow along.

IMPORTANT!
== bugzilla is NOT a forum! ==
== bugzilla is NOT a support site! ==
if a bug fits your situation, you might want to vote for it ... and perhaps add yourself to the CC list by hitting the "save changes" button - no comment is needed. please, do NOT comment unless you have new info. bugspamming - "me too" comments and various rants [*grin*] - is a good way to get the bug ignored.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

take care,
lee

[Scott56]

Thank you, Lee. I'll look into how to comment on or enter the bug report. The STR is demonstrated in the video link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEld6warOA but basically, the embedded images simply vanish at the second auto-save. You've got to type something into the message twice, once to trigger the first autosave, and after that to trigger the second one. I changed my autosave interval to 1 so I wouldn't die of old age while trying to make the problem happen. It's really cool to see the images change from the image to the missing image box as the autosave is happening.

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy Scott56,

you are welcome!

as i hinted, your steps don't produce the problem for me. i have no idea why ... and i freely admit that i am not too eager to start seeing the problem. [*grin*]

take care,
lee

[wxwizard]

I have this problem too.

One slick work around I found is to save the email by selecting File -> Save from the top menu.
Nothing will appear to happen, but if you click Send after this, it seems to magically work.

[kuf]

For I don't know how long this bug is around and I don't understand why it is so difficult to fix. Thunderbird hangs on sending messages in Linux (I am using kubunt 13.04). The only patter which I seem to see is that Thunderbird is more likely to hand when you need longer to anser the message and this is the worst case. It means when you are working on a longer text your, the longer you take the more you risk that the work is lost. Ok, you could say, just forget about the editor of thunderbird it is c... anyway and use something reasonable like emacs or something simliar. Well, yes, true, and I do so, if I write a message from scratch. However, when you want to reply to a message it is sometimes conventient to do this inline and this is where things get ugly ... so ugly that I really think about throwing away Thunderbrid all together although I am using it for years now.

However, it is not only that Thunderbird does not want to send the messagwe anymore. You also cannot store the message. So no way as far as I can see to save your work ....

Really disapointing.

Best regards,

Klaus Fischer

[ADiacovo]

Hello guys,

This fix works for me.

Here’s how to tell Thunderbird to always send attachments as attachments, instead of inline:

Open the Thunderbird Preferences (this is under “Preferences” in the Edit menu, or “Options” in the Tools menu, depending on your OS).
Go to the Advanced section, and the General tab on there.
Click the Config Editor button on there.
Enter mail.content_disposition_type in the filter box.
Double-click the only item in the list (with the exact name mail.content_disposition_type, obviously), and enter 2 as its value (instead of the 0 it’s on originally).
Close the Config Editor with the [x], and close the Preferences with [OK].

You’re now done. Thunderbird will now send plain text files as an attachment. Any other non-binary files will still be sent inline. If you want all your files to be ‘real’ attachments rather than inline attachments, set the pref to 1 instead. Tip-of-the-hat to Marco for the tip about using 2 instead of 1.

All this information was obtained from LXR and the MozillaZine KB.