Thunderbird woes.

February 24, 2008 1:30 PM

Thunderbird is messing up my outgoing attachments. Please help.

When I send Word attachments (hasn't happened with .ppt or .pdf) the recipient gets a "binary file" attachment they cannot open. When I look at my sent mail, the attachments show as files with no extension and either a blank white square or a picture of a jack in the box (I know, wtf?). I am on a Mac, os 10.5.2, Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 and am IMAP'd to my Gmail account. This is driving me bananas. I read a bunch of threads including this one and did everything they suggested, to no avail.

I can open attachments I receive, although if it's a Word doc, I have to go through the whole song and dance of selecting Microsoft Word from my apps-- the attachment doesn't look like a Word app and T'bird doesn't recognize it as such. The icon is a picture of a jack in the box.

posted by sneakin to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Best answer: Thunderbird on the Mac cannot attach Word documents successfully unless they have a suffix. PC users are accustomed to files having a suffix. Word documents on a PC typically have the suffix .doc, as in essay.doc but Mac users often do not use this convention. If you want to send a Word document as an attachment from Thunderbird on a Mac you will first need to rename the file to add to its name a dot followed by doc

If you don't include the suffix your recipient's email program will not recognise the document as a Word document, and they will not be able to open it by double-clicking on it. The document should be fine, but it will be harder for your correspondent to access it. The same applies to other types of document: for Excel files you should add the suffix .xls
posted by essexjan at 1:48 PM on February 24, 2008

Response by poster: essexjan, you are my hero. A million thank yous. That was the easiest fix ever and I feel like a goddamn idiot. But, a goddamn idiot can send Word attachments! BOO YA
posted by sneakin at 2:19 PM on February 24, 2008