Recognize PDF attachments correctly?
Thunderbird recognizes some pdfs and opens in adobe as expected, other pdfs Thunderbird identifies as .txt and won't display correctly.
I find lots of people having this problem going back many years but haven't found any solutions for windows systems.
I can save and open directly and all is fine so the pdf files are not this issue and everything works correctly in outlook. I'm trying to move users away from outlook but I can't migrate this fickle outlook user without getting through this and some other nagging T-Bird issues.
Thanks in advance.
Chosen solution
unfortunately some mail programs do not correctly encode an attachment and as a result the receiving program does not know what it is. Microsoft in particular product defective attachments. Unfortunately people keep buying their product so they see no reason to conform.
This add-on may assist and it forces the file attachment name to be used to identify the type, rather than the Mime encoding type. https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/index-en.html#openattach
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Chosen Solution
unfortunately some mail programs do not correctly encode an attachment and as a result the receiving program does not know what it is. Microsoft in particular product defective attachments. Unfortunately people keep buying their product so they see no reason to conform.
This add-on may assist and it forces the file attachment name to be used to identify the type, rather than the Mime encoding type. https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/index-en.html#openattach
The bad messages appear to have originated from thunderbird so the issue I'm chasing looks to be a tbird to tbird issue. I find web hits for this problem going back several years. What I can NOT find is a documented solution other than add-ons and work arounds.
I'm actively trying to replace an Msoft product with Tbird but the Msoft interpretation is correct and Tbird is where I see the problem. The simplest way for me to fix this is to switch the user back to Outlook so I'm here looking for solutions but can't find any so far other than blaming people for buying from Msoft? That's not really helping me transition away from Msoft.
If an file has the extension .pdf, why does Tbird only recognise it as a text file? It saves it correctly as a readable pdf. so this does not seem consistent.
In any case I seem to have another issue related to plug in install... I go to the 'addon manager' select 'install add on from a file' browse to the download linked above, select the .xpi file and nothing happens? How can I install this plugin to see if it helps?
Modified by AimCOtaco
The simple answer to your question is file extensions are not important to mime encoding. The mime type is and essentially replaces the file extension as an identifier of the file type. So if a mime document is encoded incorrectly it appears to the receiving client as what it is encoded as.
Your approach appears correct to install the add-on, have you any other add-ons? What happens if you drag the XPI and drop it into the add-on manager (it should install. But your first method should as well.
But to back up somewhat (weekends leave with more time) is it only PDF files you see an issue with? If it is, it is this that will probably fix the issue. https://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=12472 the article does not specify pdf, but I have not seen it appear as an issue with other file types.