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for me - a relatively recent problem

  • 14 replies
  • 5 have this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by sfhowes

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up until a few months ago, Thunderbird opened jpg/jpeg images inline, that is in the message window. Instead I get an empty white box where the image SHOULD have displayed. The only option now available appears to open the attached image with PHOTOS which takes longer as Thunderbird has to call photos to load the image. Also it takes longer to actually display the image. So what happened?

My current work-around to this issue is to drag/drop the attached image to my photo editor which loads rather quickly. Much faster than photos.

up until a few months ago, Thunderbird opened jpg/jpeg images inline, that is in the message window. Instead I get an empty white box where the image SHOULD have displayed. The only option now available appears to open the attached image with PHOTOS which takes longer as Thunderbird has to call photos to load the image. Also it takes longer to actually display the image. So what happened? My current work-around to this issue is to drag/drop the attached image to my photo editor which loads rather quickly. Much faster than photos.

All Replies (14)

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What do you have for View/Message Body As? Press Alt if the Menu Bar with View is hidden. Is Display Attachments Inline checked under View?

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Yes, Display Attachments Inline is checked and, as I noted in my post, they used to do so. Some update this year changed that. It also changed the way Thunderbird loads at startup. I keep my email folders collapsed but, for the last 3 months, Thunderbird expands them every time it loads.

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The collapsed/expanded state of accounts in the Folder Pane is remembered here between restarts. See if this fixes that: Help/Troubleshooting Info, Profile Folder, Open Folder, close TB, delete or rename folderTree.json and session.json. Restart TB a few times and see if the folder state is retained.

For the inline images, if they are remote images, they will only be shown if View/Message Body As is Original HTML.

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thanks for the solution to the collapsed/expanded state issue. That worked. As for the image display thing - I checked 3 emails with attached jpg images. The one dated 1-31-2020 still correctly displays as does one dated 2-16-2021. The one dated 10-10-23, which originally displayed correctly - no longer does. One problem solved - one pending.

Thanks for your input so far.

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If attached images display properly on some messages but not others, it indicates there's nothing wrong with your setup, but that some messages are formatted in such a way as to not display correctly. See if there's anything in the message source (Ctrl+U) to indicate the mailing app or OS, e.g. are the messages sent from a mobile app or a Mac device. Look at the Content-type header: is it image/jpeg or application/octet-stream.

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well, It may well be, as you said, a formatting issue. The only thing that concerns me is that the one message I noted from 10-10-23 originally worked and now does not but the other (evidently older) messages still work. Whatever happened to prevent the display of images happened sometime AFTER October 2023.

A jpg I sent out from my computer (I keep copies in case of send failure) displays correctly but that same image sent to me from a contractor, who sent it from his cell phone, did not display in line.

I will say that tentatively the problem is solved. Still, pulling the images out to the photo editor is a lot faster than using PHOTOS, which seems to be the only option available other than always ask.

Again, thanks for the help.

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I would expect the image sent from the cellphone might work if sent as an attachment, not as an embedded image, and not if it was sent from an iPhone.

Images open instantly on my system with FastStone Image Viewer as the default app. There are plenty of similar apps that are superior to Photos.

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the same issue for me. I am receiving regular emails with jpg attachments from IP security camera, sometimes jpg is displayed, sometimes not, at the same time using mobile phone email app or on my pc other email app it shows just fine. Also strange that when I try to open the attachment with faststone image viewer- nothing happens at all, if I try to save the attachment, it is saved, but the size is 0 bytes, though in a message view it shows as 241 KB. I have tried solution from https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1404538 and no difference, seems like a bug.

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Rosaliy Lynne said

Yes, Display Attachments Inline is checked and, as I noted in my post, they used to do so. Some update this year changed that. It also changed the way Thunderbird loads at startup. I keep my email folders collapsed but, for the last 3 months, Thunderbird expands them every time it loads.

I recently tried a solution given and it worked BUT, as it turns out, only until the next time I re-launch thunderbird. While checking over the settings I found the problem. COMPACT VIEW was disabled by recent updates.

Since it wasn't broke - it would be nice if they FIX IT BACK.

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Are you saying View/Density/Compact is not available? I don't see that here, but it's possible it becomes disabled if the Font Size under View or in Settings/General/Language & Appearance exceeds a certain value, i.e. the Compact spacing is smaller than the font size. Testing with a new profile (Help/Troubleshooting, about:profiles) will start with all settings at their default.

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I have checked all the above and nothing has changed. this change which forces my folders to expand when Thunderbird is launched came about with the changes to Thuderbird which replaced the get messages drop down with the cloud icon for that drop down and added the GET MESSAGES button. Prior to those changes all my mail folders remained closed until I would expand each one when checking new mail. I don't like that some programming genius took that functionality away!

fyi: my font has always been Times New Roman size 12 and still is so that is not an issue.

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If the expanded/collapsed state of the folders is not retained between TB restarts, open the profile from Help/Troubleshooting, Profile Folder, Open Folder, close TB, delete folderTree.json. Check also that there's no app like CCleaner acting on TB to reset settings.

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sfhowes said

The collapsed/expanded state of accounts in the Folder Pane is remembered here between restarts. See if this fixes that: Help/Troubleshooting Info, Profile Folder, Open Folder, close TB, delete or rename folderTree.json and session.json. Restart TB a few times and see if the folder state is retained. For the inline images, if they are remote images, they will only be shown if View/Message Body As is Original HTML.

I tried this and it worked for all of 2 days. Oh well.

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If you don't have some kind of app like CCleaner that resets TB settings like folderTree, consider creating a new profile, which might eliminate all of these issues. I do it for every major (annual) release to avoid issues with updating on old profiles. Help/Troubleshooting Info, about:profiles. After adding the accounts, it's fairly easy to transfer local mail, address books etc. from the old profile to the new.