Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Thunderbird not opening or saving attachments properly

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by Matt

more options

Sometimes, when I try to save an attachment from Thunderbird, it saves a 0kb version of PDFs or a blank docx file. It also won't open them in the viewer. It doesn't appear to happen with all attachments, just some.

The attachments LOOK fine. If I forward them to another e-mail account, or even to MYSELF, they open. It's pretty clearly something in the actual process of saving or viewing the attachments.

Sometimes, when I try to save an attachment from Thunderbird, it saves a 0kb version of PDFs or a blank docx file. It also won't open them in the viewer. It doesn't appear to happen with all attachments, just some. The attachments LOOK fine. If I forward them to another e-mail account, or even to MYSELF, they open. It's pretty clearly something in the actual process of saving or viewing the attachments.

All Replies (1)

more options

Yeah, most likely you have an issue with an antivirus program that is causing corruption in the process of "scanning" while Thunderbird saves an empty file because it is not available because of this "scanning" we see reports all the time specifically with the word and PDF documents. I suggest you change your antivirus program setting about what it scans and when. Or even disable it entirely to see if the problem of saving stops with the antivirus.