Thunderbird hangs on send saying "attaching"

[Sharonie2]

Do we have a solution to this yet?

[RayKremer]

Do we have a solution to this yet?

The options currently are:

Install the current Thunderbird beta version, which should have the fix. It won't be in the release version until the next major iteration.

Finish and send the reply before the third auto-save (15 minutes with the default settings).

If you think it's going to be longer than that, bring up the drafts folder in the main Thunderbird window and leave it there until you send the reply, which prevents activation of the bug causing this.

[DanRaisch]

Turning off auto-saving of drafts might serve the same purpose.

[Elhem Enohpi]

I'm perplexed by the reports of this being fixed, and relevant bugs being closed. I'm using Thunderbird Beta 50.0b3 and a POP account. The only "fix" I see is that you get a message confirming that it's broken, and giving you two different options for giving up!!

If I try to reply to a message with embedded / inline images, after three auto-saves, I get the error message:

Confirm
There was a problem including the file PA123456.jpeg in the message. Would you like to continue saving the message without this file?
Cancel / OK

If I press "OK", the image turns into a broken-image placeholder, and the mail will be sent without it. If I press "cancel", I get:

Save Draft Error
Unable to save your message as a draft.
Sending of the message failed.
OK

Keeping the "Drafts" folder open while composing prevents the problem.

In bug 532395, Jorg K. wrote:

Sharonie: We believe that we have identified the main contributing factors for this bug and *fixed* them.
Next week Thunderbird 49 beta will be available here
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/channel/
and you can see whether the problem persists in that version.

I think we can close this bug to the public now.

...and then closed the comments. Well, it's not fixed for me, but how am I supposed to report that? Open yet another bug? Am I missing something?

[Elhem Enohpi]

I did some more testing... using the Earlybird alpha 52.0a2, the problems seems to be fixed for me. No idea which is the relevant bug number, but I guess I won't worry about it!

I don't think running the alpha version is a great idea though, so I'll just keep using the "keep the drafts folder open" workaround for now. Thanks to whomever figured that one out.

I think I read somewhere that Thunderbird 52 is scheduled for release in March 2017.

[smacl6301]

Still an issue for me in Thunderbird 45.5.1, even after deleting old email, compacting folders, and restarting my PC, Thunderbird refused to send an email with two small attachments, one with the extension DGN the other DWG. Hangs when attaching, can't save the email either. Have to kill thunderbird using Task Manager. This does not seem to happen if the delivery format is set to plain text.

[DaveLaw]

Me too: 45.5.1 is still broken.
Look folks, this farce has been going on for 4 years now.
About time someone got it fixed.

[RayKremer]

I'm perplexed by the reports of this being fixed, and relevant bugs being closed. I'm using Thunderbird Beta 50.0b3 and a POP account. The only "fix" I see is that you get a message confirming that it's broken, and giving you two different options for giving up!!

Well that's not fixed then, but it's at least a huge improvement in how it fails over what it was doing before.

Well, it's not fixed for me, but how am I supposed to report that? Open yet another bug? Am I missing something?

I think a new bug, right. Presumably they would reopen the original bug and then mark the new one as duplicate. Also, they are going to want the extra information that was detailed in comment 200 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.c ... 32395#c200

Maybe I do need to install the 50 beta and check this. However, that may no longer apply as it looks like they totally revamped something related to this for the 52 alpha. Jorg K reports in the most recent post (comment 247): "Fixed by changing the handling of embedded images in an access-restricted bug. Some details in the bugs depending on meta-bug 1322155. This work will ship with TB 52 ESR in March 2017. Users can try this in an Earlybird version TB 52a2 after Dec. 5th, 2016."

So this new 1322155 doesn't give much info, but its dependency list contains 1322103, which talks about an issue of the embedded image reference number ending up being the wrong number after two draft saves, which is pretty much what we've been seeing. Though it seems like he's talking about some deeper thing than just the drafts.msf file vanishing.

I guess I can keep an eye on it and when 52 graduates to a beta version, grab it and do a test.

I did some more testing... using the Earlybird alpha 52.0a2, the problems seems to be fixed for me.

Ah, right then.

Again: Nobody is saying it's fixed in version 45-point-whatever. The supposed fixes they applied are only reflected in the alpha and beta versions at the moment.

[jpeek]

I'm using Thunderbird 45.1.1 under Windows 7 Professional. I read some of the 14 pages on this thread, but nowhere near all. The workaround posted May Wed 16th 2012 5:40pm by huiac worked for me. As Thunderbird had a dialog "Attaching..." I clicked the Cancel button, sent a short test message in another Compose window, then clicked Send on the long message I wanted to send.

A few minutes later, I got a bounce notice from one server of the several people I sent the message to, so I think the sending succeeded. Thanks, hulac! I'll wait for the fix in a later version of Thunderbird. (And I've gotta fill up my PayPal account to send a donation to the Thunderbird team. Thanks, folks.)

[tochiro]

I still have the same problem with TB 45.8.0 in Windows 7. TB sometimes hangs when sending emails with attachments although I unchecked "Auto Save" in the Options as suggested.

[RayKremer]

I still have the same problem with TB 45.8.0 in Windows 7. TB sometimes hangs when sending emails with attachments although I unchecked "Auto Save" in the Options as suggested.

Other people have reported that. I'm not sure why the problem still occurs with no draft auto-save.

[DaveLaw]

Thunderbird 52.0,
& another 4 months have gone by
& still this major problem is not fixed.
Is anyone working on this & if not why not?

[pete_bannister]

PLEASE fix this - how many YEARS has this bug been in there for?

I have to always scroll through emails I'm sending to delete any broken images otherwise the get stuck attaching. It's incredibly annoying and after putting up with this bug for years I'm considering switching to another client. Would rather not but this is just so irritating. Do the authors not have this problem too? If I added up the time lost due to this bug over the years it would definitely be hours if not days.

Even if the fix is just to erase the dead images from the email prior to sending, that would great.

Is it possible to write a plugin to do this? If it is feasible I'd be up for writing it.

[DanRaisch]

PLEASE fix this -

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[RayKremer]

I just looked and my Thunderbird here at the office hadn't gone to 52 yet, though of course just checking the version number triggers it to pull down updates. I'll have to try to intentionally invoke the bug once it's done. Hasn't happened to me in a while during the natural course of my day, but that's pretty much just luck.

If it does still happen we'll have to work with the bugzilla guys again to track down the cause.