Cannot delete attachments from sent messages of an IMAP acc.

[fredestet]

hi there,

i have a problem that seems to exists since at least 2009 according to google results: i cannot delete attachments of emails in thunderbird. and i couldn't find any solution to that problem, which is well described here (from 2009):

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1222425

in my particular case, it's related to sent messages of an IMAP account using thunderbird on ubuntu-16.04 linux. when right-clicking on the attachment at the bottom of the thunderbird window, the delete or detach field is not activated.

does by now, 10 years later, anyone know possible reasons for and a solution to this problem?

thanks & regards

[tanstaafl]

Moved from Thunderbird Bugs to Thunderbird Support.

My impression from the old bug report mentioned in the thread is that it occurred with messages sent from Apple Mail that have multipart/related body parts. I haven't heard of anybody having a similar problem for years. Your post says its with messages you sent using Thunderbird from Ubuntu. That seems a different problem. You need to provide more details.

[fredestet]

sorry for the late answer. jut forgot to check this .. what further information do you think is needed?

- it's TB v52.1.1 (though older versions of the last 6-12 month behaved the same way)

- it only appeared on my newest ubuntu system (16.04) before (with 12.04/14.04) i didn't encounter this issue

- only related to the sent-directory my (only) IMAP account, not occurring with my POP3 account

- possibly important: i kept the same TH profile file system with every OS upgrade (ubuntu 12.04->14.04->16.04) such that all messages/settings were already there after installing and configuring TB

thanks so far!

[zjays]

I'm having the same or a similar problem. I can't delete attachments from any messages from my IMAP Gmail Inbox folder. I also tried with a fresh profile, and it still didn't work. Is this function broken? Can anyone confirm? Thanks!

[tanstaafl]

Works for me. I tested using Thunderbird 52.4.0 under Windows 10 x64 with a Gmail IMAP account. The paperclip icon is still present in the folder listing but the attachment has been renamed to Deleted: article-0-1B706201000005DC-454_634x476.jpg . View -> Message Source (or Control-U) shows the attachment no longer has any encoded data and is just some message headers.

--------------592DE49596DB35647064B02C
Content-Type: text/x-moz-deleted; name="Deleted: article-0-1B706201000005DC-454_634x476.jpg"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="Deleted: article-0-1B706201000005DC-454_634x476.jpg"
X-Mozilla-Altered: AttachmentDeleted; date="Tue Oct 17 01:06:37 2017"

You deleted an attachment from this message. The original MIME headers for the attachment were:
Content-Type: image/jpeg;
name="article-0-1B706201000005DC-454_634x476.jpg"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="article-0-1B706201000005DC-454_634x476.jpg"

[zjays]

Thanks for testing. Actually, I'm getting the same result as you now. I think I was using the Detach function previously.

However, in my Gmail inbox at gmail.com, the message I delete or detach an attachment from is now duplicated in Gmail - one is the original message with the original attachment still attached, and the 2nd is the one with the "empty" attachment that Thunderbird created. Do you get the same thing?

[tanstaafl]

I didn't but I have some unusual settings to delete messages.

I believe when Thunderbird deletes an attachment it actually creates a modified copy of the message (with no attachment, just some headers) and then deletes the original. Depending upon your "when I delete a message" and your expunge settings you may or may not see that deleted message. If you see if with a line drawn through it in the folder listing that's because "when I delete a message" is set to "just mark it as deleted". You see the same thing if you edit a message using the HeaderToolsLite add-on.

[zjays]

Thanks again, I think I figured out the problem. I have my account settings in Thunderbird set to put deleted messages in the Gmail Bin folder when I delete a message. It works as expected when I simply delete a message.

However, when Thunderbird deletes the original message after removing the attachments, I found it simply removes the "Inbox" label in Gmail. According to my settings, Thunderbird should also add a "Bin" label to the original message, but it doesn't do so. I found this was the case regardless of Expunge settings.

[djan9el]

Thanks again, I think I figured out the problem. I have my account settings in Thunderbird set to put deleted messages in the Gmail Bin folder when I delete a message. It works as expected when I simply delete a message.

However, when Thunderbird deletes the original message after removing the attachments, I found it simply removes the "Inbox" label in Gmail. According to my settings, Thunderbird should also add a "Bin" label to the original message, but it doesn't do so. I found this was the case regardless of Expunge settings.

Were you able to fix this problem? I'm having the same issue deleting attachments.

[zjays]

Were you able to fix this problem? I'm having the same issue deleting attachments.

Sorry for the very late reply. I didn't solve the problem I described in my previous post; I assumed this behaviour was a bug in Thunderbird for Gmail accounts. I think I went to my Gmail account in a browser, filtered all the duplicate messages, and deleted all of the original ones containing the attachments.

[godzfire]

I want to resurrect this thread because I am having the issue of my IMAP account RE-ADDING the attachments that I've told it to delete or detach. I will choose the options, it will then delete from the email, and then after a short time, the attachment will just REATTACH itself. I've tried it on multiple emails to confirm it's not a specific one. This is also messages from the Sent folder.

What the heck is going on?