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Archived

How can I save attachements from multiple emails?

Thunderbird Other
Patch1 replied 9 years ago
DJVL
DJVL

During the day i get multiple emails with an attachment. I want to save the attachments all at once. Is that possible?

During the day i get multiple emails with an attachment. I want to save the attachments all at once. Is that possible?

All Replies (1)

Patch1
Patch1

I have a similar problem and while FiltaQuilla is close to the solution, it (currently) is not the solution.

To explain, Filters in Thunderbird should execute in the order they are listed however FiltaQuilla executes asynchronously. As as result the following filter 

     {Wait for items referenced in search to be available}
From is MyHostedFaxServer@theirURL
Subject starts with "Fax from"
Attachment Status is has attachment
     {Perform actions (in stated order)}
Mark as Read
     {Wait for above to complete}
     {Wait for attachment to download}
Save Attachment to \\MyServer\ReceivedFaxes
     {Wait for file write to complete}
Move Message to zFaxProcessed on FaxEmailAddress@myEmailHost {an IMAP subfolder}

This filter should clear all incoming faxes from my inbox by copying the actual fax (a pdf document) to a local share on my network and moving the email to a subfolder from where it can be deleted at a later date. Emails not processed for any reason should be easy to spot as they will sit in my inbox. Any interruption to processing may result in a duplicate pdf in my received fax directory but not missing documents.

In practice it does not work using FiltaQuilla because the components run asynchronously, without waiting for input data to be available or the proceeding operation to finish. This creates a race condition or in the above pseudo code "Wait for" is implemented as "Don't wait for". The proposed work around for combining moves with complex actions is to apply filter getting new mail "Filter after Junk classification" rather than "Filter before Junk Classification". And replace "Move Message to" with "Move later"

Unfortunately adding small fixed delays may work some of the time but will fail under some load conditions and almost never works on my computer if run "When getting new mail" (1. no document is copied to network drive and 2. email in Thunderbird zFaxProcessed subfolder on FaxEmailAddress@myEmailHost has unknown or zero length [until "Repair Folder" is run in ThunderBird).

Note I'm running the current release versions of Thunderbird v45.4.0 and FiltaQuilla v1.3.2 on a Windows 7 professional 64 bit. Email is accessed via IMAP mail server (so inbox is maintained for all of my devices).

Also FiltaQuilla bug saving to network drives has persisted since at least 2010, causing the leading double backslash is converted to a single backslash on reloading.

Although there appears to be many outstanding filter issues

So I suppose my questions are 1) Am I doing something wrong / Does this work for other users? 2) If this is beyond ThunderBird or FiltaQuilla does anyone have suggestions for a better platform.

I have looked at AttachmentExtractor which had good attachment renaming capabilities but is designed to run interactively and is no longer maintained.

Modified by Patch1