Attachments do not move with the e-mail, when I use a filter to move e-mail to a sub-folder
Here is the problem:
- My company sends me a working roster (PDF-file) each day. This roster is in an attachment of the e-mail they send me.
- So I made a sub-folder below my inbox named "Roster IN", where it could be quicker found.
- I made a filter to automatically have the e-mail be send to that "Roster IN" folder, when it arrives.
But when I now go to that folder, open the e-mail and try to open the attachment (the roster) it's not there.
TB says there is an attachment, but it is empty.
Only when I move the e-mail back (from the sub-folder) to the main IN folder, can I still read the attachment.
That is not how that is suppose to work!
So it appears to me the attachment obviously exist, but probably because I moved the main e-mail to the sub-folder the relative connection the attachment has with this e-mail, gets lost, until I move it back into the main folder and all the little software pointers are pointing to the same happy location again.
And I see no option in the filter options, to make it so the attachment also gets moved to this sub-folder I made.
But whatever... is there a solution for this?
How can I read the attachments when I have moved an e-mail to a sub-folder, from the sub-folder itself? If that is not possible, then making sub-folders would be rather pointless after all.
Thanks already for your assistance!
GeorgeSaint trɔe
All Replies (4)
Can you open the attachment when you disable the filter, and initially open the message in Inbox?
No. The filter applies immediately when a particular e-mail message arrives in my main inbox, so it is moved directly to the sub-folder I made.
Removing the filter does nothing. The e-mail would already be in the sub-folder, and the link to the attachment distorted.
I tried it, as you proposed, but that does not help me.
The only thing that would probably work, is removing the filter altogether completely and then reading my roster information in the main inbox when it arrives.
But that would defeat the point of me having a sub-folder. I want my roster information in a separate folder so I can easier find it amongst the giant cloud of e-mail I get every day.
Now I have to search for it each time. Frustrating.
I am wondering,... as the attachment is a PDF,... if it is perhaps a PDF specific problem.
I'll try sending e-mail to myself later this weekend to test it out. And see what happens with attachments of other formats.
I'll let the results be known here.
GeorgeSaint trɔe
I've had this same problem with attached avi files. The data is there in the moved message but Thunderbird fails to "see" it.
Rebuilding the folder's index can help. Right-click|Properties|Repair Folder
Another trick is to use File|Save and save the message as an eml file somewhere handy, such as your desktop. When you open it by double clicking it, lo and behold the attachment reappears.
It was suggested to me that the filter might be acting prematurely and moving the message before all the data had arrived. I'm not sure about this as the moved message can be shown to incorporate the missing data. The advice based on this was to set the filter to operate "after classification". I'd set it to "before classification" because the filter had already identified the message as a good and useful so allowing Junk Controls to process it seemed unnecessary. Changing this didn't help me, but YMMV.