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TBird Opens in Tabs Sort of Display; Also PDF Attachments Not Opening; Word Attachments Open Fine

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  • Last reply by alysenet

alysenet
alysenet
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Suddenly, ever since today, maybe yesterday, I don't recognize the display that I'm seeing when I open Thunderbird. It's some odd tab-like display (see attached example of what I see when I open TBird now), and I end up resorting to clicking the first tab, which usually has Sent or Inbox, something familiar. What am I seeing? I love TBird when everything looks familiar, but when suddenly I'm not seeing what I expect, I am just lost.

Also, suddenly today, pretty sure today, not yesterday, when I double-click PDF attachments in emails I had sent, the PDF doesn't open, from what I can tell. When I then tried an MS Word attachment, that attachment opened fine. To try to solve this PDF-attachment-opening problem, I went into my Windows 10 PC's Control Panel > Programs > Default Programs > Associate a file type or protocol with a program > Choose default apps by file type ..... and then saw that the .pdf line item surprisingly said pdfs would open using "MICROSOFT EDGE" instead of what I would have expected to be either Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, since PDFs were opening fine in TBird some version of Acrobat before today. I then changed the .pdf line item from MICROSOFT EDGE to ADOBE ACROBAT.

But, still, when I double-click a PDF attachment in a Sent email, nothing seems to happen.

I then restarted my PC.

And, in Thunderbird, I opened the Sent folder and right-clicked it, selected Properties, and clicked Repair.

But, still, when I double-click a PDF attachment in a Sent email, nothing seems to happen.

This probably isn't relevant, but . . . a week or two ago, I finally looked into the annoying behavior of PDFs ending up *downloading* instead of resulting in a dialog box that let me do a Save in Adobe Acrobat or Save in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC -- I forget how to exactly describe what was going on . ... but I had gone through some steps that actually succeeded in giving me the dialog box.

Any insights on how to solve these two likely-not-related problems, step by step, I'd appreciate it!

Suddenly, ever since today, maybe yesterday, I don't recognize the display that I'm seeing when I open Thunderbird. It's some odd tab-like display (see attached example of what I see when I open TBird now), and I end up resorting to clicking the first tab, which usually has Sent or Inbox, something familiar. What am I seeing? I love TBird when everything looks familiar, but when suddenly I'm not seeing what I expect, I am just lost. Also, suddenly today, pretty sure today, not yesterday, when I double-click PDF attachments in emails I had sent, the PDF doesn't open, from what I can tell. When I then tried an MS Word attachment, that attachment opened fine. To try to solve this PDF-attachment-opening problem, I went into my Windows 10 PC's Control Panel > Programs > Default Programs > Associate a file type or protocol with a program > Choose default apps by file type ..... and then saw that the .pdf line item surprisingly said pdfs would open using "MICROSOFT EDGE" instead of what I would have expected to be either Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, since PDFs were opening fine in TBird some version of Acrobat before today. I then changed the .pdf line item from MICROSOFT EDGE to ADOBE ACROBAT. But, still, when I double-click a PDF attachment in a Sent email, nothing seems to happen. I then restarted my PC. And, in Thunderbird, I opened the Sent folder and right-clicked it, selected Properties, and clicked Repair. But, still, when I double-click a PDF attachment in a Sent email, nothing seems to happen. This probably isn't relevant, but . . . a week or two ago, I finally looked into the annoying behavior of PDFs ending up *downloading* instead of resulting in a dialog box that let me do a Save in Adobe Acrobat or Save in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC -- I forget how to exactly describe what was going on . ... but I had gone through some steps that actually succeeded in giving me the dialog box. Any insights on how to solve these two likely-not-related problems, step by step, I'd appreciate it!
Attached screenshots

Modified by alysenet

Chosen solution

View menu > Layout and turn the folder pane vback on. That will probably help a lot.

Then go to preferences on the tools menu search for "file" without the quotes. In the box with the file types that is found locate PDF and set it to the application your want to use.

Just an FYI. Windows uses file extensions to identify file types. (*.PDF). In Thunderbird, and the email and the internet in general, the media type (application/pdf). registered in the page is used to identify attached file types.

What this means in practice is if I correctly encode an attachment happy.birthday as an application/pdf in an email it will be opened as a PDF file type. It also means that windows file associations mostly do not come into play.

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Matt
Matt
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Chosen Solution

View menu > Layout and turn the folder pane vback on. That will probably help a lot.

Then go to preferences on the tools menu search for "file" without the quotes. In the box with the file types that is found locate PDF and set it to the application your want to use.

Just an FYI. Windows uses file extensions to identify file types. (*.PDF). In Thunderbird, and the email and the internet in general, the media type (application/pdf). registered in the page is used to identify attached file types.

What this means in practice is if I correctly encode an attachment happy.birthday as an application/pdf in an email it will be opened as a PDF file type. It also means that windows file associations mostly do not come into play.

alysenet
alysenet Question owner
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Thanks, Matt! Thunderbird opened OK today ... no white window with tabs but instead what I'm familiar with. I went into View > Layout and folder pane was on. I'm taking notes, so I'll be ready for next time, in case what had happened was that it suddenly had switched off for some reason.

And Tools > Preferences . . . File section . . . and changing the two .pdf line items to Adobe Acrobat did the trick for achieving my goal of getting back to being able to open Thunderbird PDF attachments in Acrobat! That spot sure looked familiar (see attached, before my changing both to Acrobat) ... the "Ask Always" in particular. That might have been the place I had made the changes a couple of weeks ago, to solve that "download" behavior I wasn't liking in that other scenario I still can't quite recall. In hindsight, from your reply, I probably should have gone into the Windows file associations for that; not sure if I had done that.

Thanks again!