Keep Thunderbird Attachments Separate From Mailbox In Quick Steps

Issues with Thunderbird

As there are specific issues and their solutions but the blog is about one of the well known issue to remove attachments from mass emails in Thunderbird. Lets discuss covering user common queries:-

“I am using Thunderbird from last 3 years and now my Thunderbird is taking up too much space as it is nearly full of emails. I want to clear out some space. Please help me out with the process and suggest if I can mass detach all the attachments from my emails?”

This is a general query of user regarding Thunderbird attachment extraction. Well there are numerous solutions available for this issue. Let us discuss some relevant ones.

Proposed solution – Why Thunderbird detach Attachments?

Thunderbird came up with the feature of “detach” attachments from emails so that they will not increase your mailbox size and can save up some storage space. In case you want to reduce your mailbox size or in some situation where “Mailbox size exceeded” error will pop up, you can remove attachments from Thunderbird mailbox easily.

The point to be remembered here is that you have to compact your saved folder in order to restore disk space, this goes for the deleted files also. You can do so by following steps:-

Open Thunderbird
Go to File
Click Compact Folders option there.

How to remove attachments in Thunderbird?

To do so we have to follow some simple procedure. Here is the whole process mentioned below:-

Select the specific email
Right click on the Email Attachments > Select the ‘Detach’ option
Note:- If you select “Save as” it will save a copy and won’t help you in clearing out mailbox space.
A screen will show up with prompt message of Save Location for the attached files.
Another prompt of whether you want to delete the attachment from that specific email will pop up. Confirm the pop-up and process next.

Now the thing to notice here is that once the attachment is deleted, you will see it, meanwhile the file name will still exist if there is no attachment. This will help you in sense to figure out which attachment is linked with which email message.

The attachment icon whereas no longer shows, which simply indicates that you have successfully detached the email attachments from Thunderbird mailbox.

How to Remove Mass Attachments in Thunderbird

As working in an email client from years collected huge mail data like bulky inbox, archive folders, sent box and other specific folders too. Therefore, detaching attachment individually will take good time plus lots of effort. So this feature of mass attachment extraction in Thunderbird is introduced and deployed for user easiness & efficiency.

The Add-on Thunderbird Attachment Extractor by Mozilla helps you out for detaching mass email attachments at once.

How to use Thunderbird Attachment Extractor?

The following procedure explains the simplest way of using attachment extractor in Thunderbird. Here is the steps:-

Download the Add-on and install it from Attachment Extractor.
After some general configuration settings, restart your Thunderbird for successfully applying the Add-on.
Now its time to optimize the Thunderbird extractor settings as per your own requirement.
Go to Tools > Attachment Extractor settings
Do the changes according to your requirement.
Go to General tab > you will see the tab “After extracting attachments should we”. Below is the screen embedded for your easiness to configure the settings.
Choose Delete the attachment from the message. If you didn’t opted for this option then there occurs an issue where your attachment extractor might freezes when try to find out the detached attachment file which is missing from its save location.
Inside the settings, use Attachment extraction’s internal routine. As it is not preferable hence no need to use this routine on important files. Well this step will detach your attachment and saves your email storage space.

Now other things to notice are that, in some rare cases this internal routine if not used will constantly asks to remove Thunderbird attachment and there is no way to turn off this prompt till now. Hence to save yourself from this annoying prompt we prefer to use internal routine instead of Thunderbird general code.

Advance Option to Remove Emails Attachment in Thunderbird

Go to Advanced Tab
The changes we made will check for the box “also extract embedded or inline images” option.
Removing the inline images from your mailbox will help you to save more storage space inside your Thunderbird mailbox and makes it easier to backup email messages.
Now go to Filenames Tab > add extensions inside the option “extract all files except”
1. .eml
2. .bat
3. .exe
4. .ade
5. .adp
6. .bas
7. .chm
8. .cmd
9. .com
10. .cpl
11. .crt
12. .hlp
13. .hta
14. .inf
15. .ins
16. .isp
17. .js
18. .jse
19. .lnk
Use the pattern #fromemail#_#date#_#namepart## for filename.
This will result in sorting the file name according to sender, which later helps on finding the attachments. Eg:- xyz@example.com_2009-1-1_image
If you want to get a specific date in the m-d-y pattern, then Go to Edit Date Pattern button > Enter specific y-m-d

After enabling these settings, you are able to detach multiple email attachments in Thunderbird. But in case if Attachment extractor freezing your Thunderbird with anonymous behaviour or blank field or unresponsive events, buttons. Then here come the troubleshooting part for Freezing Thunderbird.

How to Troubleshoot Thunderbird from Email Attachment Extractor?

Here are two scenarios marked which creates issue in Thunderbird, these are following :-

Query 1 :- Attachment Extractor Freezes when you detach any particular attachment from bulk messages.

Solution :- Well it is an inbuilt issue of Mozilla Thunderbird and we have a temporary fix for this. If the issue occur then follow these simple steps :-

Close the not responding freezed extracting window
Recreate an empty file of same name space as the detached file.
The Attachment Extractor will detect the empty file as the attachment & resume again.

Query 2 :- Thunderbird often crashes when we try or save the changes in settings?

Solution :- The common issue of crashing Thunderbird when edit or try the settings. The fix of this error is that you should go for the editing of settings manually via config editor window. Even if the interface may occur empty, your settings will be saved in the config editor.

Verdict:- Remove Multiple Emails Attachments from Thunderbird

Well at last, these procedures you let will learn How to remove attachments from multiple Thunderbird mailbox efficiently & in less time. Well do not forget to compact your folder after detaching the attachment. This will clear out the space and make it available for backup process in Thunderbird.