Saving and detaching attachments: Difference between revisions
(Description of attachments, how Thunderbird handles them, and differences from Eudora (which converts them as it downloads messages and saves them in a designated folder)) |
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Revision as of 15:37, 15 February 2005
An attachment (or email attachment) is a file that has been encoded in a format compatible for sending through the Internet. These attachments are embedded in and sent along with email messages. In MIME, the standard format of email messages, attaching a file to a message is done by encoding both the original message and the file to be attached in a multipart message.
Thunderbird uses the MIME format for embedding attachments in email messages. When a message is downloaded, Thunderbird preserves the original MIME format of the message and allows you to save (or extract) attachments to disk at any time.
Downloaded attachments are stored in each mailbox (.mbx) file together with the message they came with. If you wish to eliminate an attachment from your computer, you must delete its accompanying message.
Migrating from Eudora
This is different from how Eudora stores attachments, since there is no separate "attachment" folder with saved documents. Eudora processes the MIME format as soon as it downloads a message and automatically extracts any attachments it finds to the specified folder encounter – after this process, the message is stripped of its MIME format and is then saved in the mailbox file either as plain text, rich text, or HTML, as appropriate.
When importing from Eudora, Thunderbird will encode the attachments in MIME format and insert them into the messages. This can take quite a long time if there is a large number of attachments. Accordingly, the mailbox files in Thunderbird may be much larger than they were in Eudora.
