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 Attachment action settings not working

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by christ1

more options

I have two profiles on Thunderbird. One works fine (default profile) and the other does not. The problem is that the attachment actions are ignored with the non-default profile. For example, if I change the Action app for handling html it always goes to Firefox (the system default) and never goes to what I set it at like IE. It also never prompts (always ask) if set to that setting. Deleting the mimetypes.rdf file does not change any of the behavior but does result in a blank list so it is reading in the file. Copying the default profile mimetypes.rdf to the non-default profile had no affect on the behavior.

All works well for the default profile. As far as I can tell, the two profiles are identical except the incoming and outgoing server settings.

This has been an ongoing problem with my older system on Windows 7. Now have a new computer on Windows 10--problem is still there, but was trying to fix it this time. Currently running Thunderbird version 45.5.1

I have two profiles on Thunderbird. One works fine (default profile) and the other does not. The problem is that the attachment actions are ignored with the non-default profile. For example, if I change the Action app for handling html it always goes to Firefox (the system default) and never goes to what I set it at like IE. It also never prompts (always ask) if set to that setting. Deleting the mimetypes.rdf file does not change any of the behavior but does result in a blank list so it is reading in the file. Copying the default profile mimetypes.rdf to the non-default profile had no affect on the behavior. All works well for the default profile. As far as I can tell, the two profiles are identical except the incoming and outgoing server settings. This has been an ongoing problem with my older system on Windows 7. Now have a new computer on Windows 10--problem is still there, but was trying to fix it this time. Currently running Thunderbird version 45.5.1

Chosen solution

If you want links to open in IE you'll need to set IE as default browser. Thunderbird will always open links with the default browser. This has got nothing to do with MIME types for attachments.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (3)

more options
if I change the Action app for handling html it always goes to Firefox (the system default) and never goes to what I set it at like IE.

Are you talking about a link in the message body or an actual html file attached to a message?

more options

christ1 said

if I change the Action app for handling html it always goes to Firefox (the system default) and never goes to what I set it at like IE.

Are you talking about a link in the message body or an actual html file attached to a message?

Link in the email message body.

more options

Chosen Solution

If you want links to open in IE you'll need to set IE as default browser. Thunderbird will always open links with the default browser. This has got nothing to do with MIME types for attachments.