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Tab automatically closes after downloading file, sometimes before file has been saved to new destination.

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For the last week or two I have had an issue with Firefox closing my email (yahoo business mail) tab automatically, every time I download a file from an email.

After opening emial I click to download the file, i have the settings set to ask where I want it saved, and then either while I'm selecting the destination and labeling it, or right after the tab automatically closes. It happens both ways which suggests to me it's occurring after a specified amount of time, not based on completion of an action. And it's happening every time.

MacBook Pro Firefox 102.0.1

Any idea how to stop this?

For the last week or two I have had an issue with Firefox closing my email (yahoo business mail) tab automatically, every time I download a file from an email. After opening emial I click to download the file, i have the settings set to ask where I want it saved, and then either while I'm selecting the destination and labeling it, or right after the tab automatically closes. It happens both ways which suggests to me it's occurring after a specified amount of time, not based on completion of an action. And it's happening every time. MacBook Pro Firefox 102.0.1 Any idea how to stop this?

All Replies (3)

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Are you still experiencing this problem with Yahoo mail closing when you download (not preview) an attachment? There are numerous threads about that. This is a copy/paste of my comment from another thread which might be relevant to your issue (from https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1401782#answer-1558480):

There is something unusual going on, but first, this seems to work normally:

(1) Open a new tab and open your Yahoo Inbox in only that one tab (2) Click the message that has the attachment; it appears in the same tab (3) Hover the image attachment and click the download button and Save the file -- nothing weird happens

If I force Yahoo Mail to display a message in a second tab, and then download an attachment from that message, then I am able to replicate the unwanted behavior. Here are the four ways I tested:

Scenario A: Open Inbox in a second tab or a new window. Either:

  • right-click the yahoo!mail logo and choose Open Link in New Tab
  • right-click the yahoo!mail logo and choose Open Link in New Window

In this scenario, I can open and view a message in the new tab/window without any rude surprises, but if I open a message and download an attachment, then at some point thereafter, the new tab/window is closed.

Scenario B: Open a single message in a second tab or a new window. Either:

  • Shift+right-click the message in the Inbox and click Open Link in New Tab
  • Shift+right-click the message in the Inbox and click Open Link in New Window

Same here: I can view the message without any rude surprises, but if I download an attachment, then at some point thereafter, the new tab/window is closed.

Can you tell whether you have Yahoo mail open in a different tab? If you type or paste %yahoo in the address bar, Firefox should list all the open Yahoo tabs. You could scan the list to see whether there is another mail tab open which may be the master tab that stays open.


How to allow a second Yahoo! Mail tab to stay open?

I'm doubtful that Firefox is deciding to close the tab for its own reasons because (A) there is an inexplicable delay after the download is completed and (B) it doesn't happen on other sites.

But how could Yahoo! control this? Perhaps a script in the page itself is closing the tab when it was launched from another Yahoo tab. To test that, I tried these methods to open the second window/tab in a completely independent way:

  • press Ctrl+T [Mac OS: Command+T] to launch a new tab, type mail.yahoo.com in the address bar and press Enter to load it (Ctrl+clicking a bookmark should also work)
  • press Ctrl+N [Mac OS: Command+N] to launch a new window, type mail.yahoo.com in the address bar and press Enter to load it (Shift+clicking a bookmark should also work)

Neither of those got closed after opening a message and downloading an attachment.

That's what I've discovered so far. It's not satisfactory that Yahoo is allowed to close a tab when it wants to. Normally, scripts in pages were only allowed to close their tab if the tab was launched using a script. Since the links were launched in a second tab/window by me using Firefox's link context menu, I didn't think the page would be allowed to close its tab in that case. Something seems to have changed.

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Windows 10 with fully updated Firefox here and I've been having the same issue only in Firefox and never in Chrome.

Just for giggles I tried a similar series of experiments (Yahoo only tab in only FF window, Yahoo one of multiple tabs in one FF window, Yahoo as only tab in second window with and without Yahoo open in tab in first window) and in most cases I get the Rude Surprise(TM). It happens regardless of the attachment's file type (most of what we get is various image formats, .pdf, and the occasional .doc/.docx). Every once in a blue moon the tab miraculously stays open, but I've never noticed anything obviously different about the situation when it does.

Now, the good news: as long as the Rude Surprise(TM) doesn't shut the only open Firefox window (i.e. I have another tab open to keep the window alive), even if the tab closes, the file does manage to download so there's that. And if I do have another keep-alive tab open I can get the Yahoo tab back with ctrl-shift-T as normal. It's a kludgey end-run around an annoying problem that IMO shouldn't even exist, but there you go.

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Hi alex275, as far as I can tell, Yahoo! mail isn't able to close its tab if it wasn't referred/linked/launched from another Yahoo! or Yahoo! mail page.