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Thunderbird Attachment action settings not working

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  • Last reply by christ1

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I have two profiles on Thunderbird. One works fine (default profile) and the other does not. The problem is that the attachment actions are ignored with the non-default profile. For example, if I change the Action app for handling html it always goes to Firefox (the system default) and never goes to what I set it at like IE. It also never prompts (always ask) if set to that setting. Deleting the mimetypes.rdf file does not change any of the behavior but does result in a blank list so it is reading in the file. Copying the default profile mimetypes.rdf to the non-default profile had no affect on the behavior.

All works well for the default profile. As far as I can tell, the two profiles are identical except the incoming and outgoing server settings.

This has been an ongoing problem with my older system on Windows 7. Now have a new computer on Windows 10--problem is still there, but was trying to fix it this time. Currently running Thunderbird version 45.5.1

I have two profiles on Thunderbird. One works fine (default profile) and the other does not. The problem is that the attachment actions are ignored with the non-default profile. For example, if I change the Action app for handling html it always goes to Firefox (the system default) and never goes to what I set it at like IE. It also never prompts (always ask) if set to that setting. Deleting the mimetypes.rdf file does not change any of the behavior but does result in a blank list so it is reading in the file. Copying the default profile mimetypes.rdf to the non-default profile had no affect on the behavior. All works well for the default profile. As far as I can tell, the two profiles are identical except the incoming and outgoing server settings. This has been an ongoing problem with my older system on Windows 7. Now have a new computer on Windows 10--problem is still there, but was trying to fix it this time. Currently running Thunderbird version 45.5.1

Chosen solution

If you want links to open in IE you'll need to set IE as default browser. Thunderbird will always open links with the default browser. This has got nothing to do with MIME types for attachments.

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if I change the Action app for handling html it always goes to Firefox (the system default) and never goes to what I set it at like IE.

Are you talking about a link in the message body or an actual html file attached to a message?

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christ1 said

if I change the Action app for handling html it always goes to Firefox (the system default) and never goes to what I set it at like IE.

Are you talking about a link in the message body or an actual html file attached to a message?

Link in the email message body.

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Chosen Solution

If you want links to open in IE you'll need to set IE as default browser. Thunderbird will always open links with the default browser. This has got nothing to do with MIME types for attachments.