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Thunderbird open only certain links

  • 5 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 23 views
  • Last reply by sfhowes

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I have this problem. One of my customers receives an e-mail from a governament branch every month. In this e-mail there's an hypertext link that they have to click in order to get to a web page where they will download a file. If you click on this link nothing happens, if you right click and try to copy the address nothing happens as well. On the other hand on the same e-mail there's a link to the site of this governament branch. This link works without any problem. I have tried to forward this e-mail to another program and there the link works. I have tried a lot of solutions (I made sure to have a default browser, that there are no HTTP HTTPS default programs set in thunderbird and a lot of other solutions). Note: if you hover over the link that doesn't work, in the bottom left corner of thunderbird nothing appears, while if you do the same with the working link the same link appears. What should I do? (sorry for my english, it's not my first Language)

I have this problem. One of my customers receives an e-mail from a governament branch every month. In this e-mail there's an hypertext link that they have to click in order to get to a web page where they will download a file. If you click on this link nothing happens, if you right click and try to copy the address nothing happens as well. On the other hand on the same e-mail there's a link to the site of this governament branch. This link works without any problem. I have tried to forward this e-mail to another program and there the link works. I have tried a lot of solutions (I made sure to have a default browser, that there are no HTTP HTTPS default programs set in thunderbird and a lot of other solutions). Note: if you hover over the link that doesn't work, in the bottom left corner of thunderbird nothing appears, while if you do the same with the working link the same link appears. What should I do? (sorry for my english, it's not my first Language)

All Replies (5)

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Some mail programs format links so that they are not clickable in (some) recipients' email programs. This is most common with mobile mail apps where the sender types in the link directly instead of embedding it in a text string. It also happens with the Win10 Mail app. Since you can click on the site link and it opens in the browser, there's probably no issue with clicking 'proper' links in TB.

You might get an idea of why the link is not clickable by viewing the message source (Ctrl+U); you will probably see some non-standard items in the link html.

There are add-ons, such as URL Link, that help with unclickable links, if the user receives a lot of them.

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I tried your solution, but it didn't work. So I took some screenshots to make you understand better my problem. Don't mind the fact that they are written in italian, I'll explain it if you don't understand. 1)The link with the error as you can see it's not a proper link but some text connected to a link (that's why URL link didn't work) 2)The link as it appears if I serch it with Ctrl U, as you can see the link is there but it doesn't work, I couldn't even see with out viewing the message source. 3)A link that appears in the same mail and that actually work

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You can see the link in the first picture has a href=3D in the code, which indicates the message was sent in quoted-printable format:

https://github.com/mautic/mautic/issues/4115#issuecomment-303119188

There's a long discussion here that may help you make TB read these types of messages.

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Unfortunatly this solution didn't work either. I feel like I've tried everything. I'm sorry that I'm wasting so much of your time, but I would really like to know if you know some other possible solution.

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I don't think there's much you can do when someone sends a link in quoted-printable format. Fortunately, it's quite rare, so just open the message source, copy the link (Ctrl+C), and paste it into the browser's address bar. Note that in the example in your 2nd picture, the link wasn't even entered correctly in the html tag: it begins with www. instead of the proper http://www.