Join the Mozilla’s Test Days event from Dec 2–8 to test the new Firefox address bar on Firefox Beta 134 and get a chance to win Mozilla swag vouchers! 🎁

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

Attachments saving to private folder in Thunderbird 91.4.1

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by suzanne19

more options

I'm running Thunderbird for MacOS.

Until recently, when I double-clicked on an attachment in an email I've received, Thunderbird would open it in the appropriate program (ie, Acrobat for PDFs, or Word for doc files) AND save them into my Downloads folder -- which is what I've specified in my preferences as the destination folder for saving files.

Now, since updating to Thunderbird recently (I'm now running 91.4.1), double-clicking an attachment still opens it in the correct program, but it puts the file in some embedded folder in /private/var/folders... that I can't directly access. These files aren't visible to me in the Finder, so I can't find them later to open them.

Is there any way to change this behavior -- eg, to specify a different folder for storing attachments that you're opening to view? Now it takes me multiple clicks to view an attachment and download it to a place that I can keep it, which is what I want to do the vast majority of the time with an attachment (ie, both view it and keep it). I can't find any preferences that would allow me to specify where a double-clicked attachment should be stored on my machine.

Thanks!

I'm running Thunderbird for MacOS. Until recently, when I double-clicked on an attachment in an email I've received, Thunderbird would open it in the appropriate program (ie, Acrobat for PDFs, or Word for doc files) AND save them into my Downloads folder -- which is what I've specified in my preferences as the destination folder for saving files. Now, since updating to Thunderbird recently (I'm now running 91.4.1), double-clicking an attachment still opens it in the correct program, but it puts the file in some embedded folder in /private/var/folders... that I can't directly access. These files aren't visible to me in the Finder, so I can't find them later to open them. Is there any way to change this behavior -- eg, to specify a different folder for storing attachments that you're opening to view? Now it takes me multiple clicks to view an attachment and download it to a place that I can keep it, which is what I want to do the vast majority of the time with an attachment (ie, both view it and keep it). I can't find any preferences that would allow me to specify where a double-clicked attachment should be stored on my machine. Thanks!

All Replies (2)

more options

I use Windows, but my tip may help. Look for Preferences>General and locate the file types section and there should be a setting for where to store downloads.

more options

Thanks for the reply. My "Save file as" setting is correctly set, and when I click on the "Save" button the file is put the right place. But when I double click on the attachment and it opens it into the appropriate program (eg, if I double click a PDF attachment, it opens in Adobe), the file isn't downloaded into the directory specified in the "Save file as" setting. Instead, it's (temporarily) stored in some system folder (which is automatically cleaned up periodically).

I assume people wanted a way to view files without "saving" them, so double-clicking now seems to store the file in a temporary place. But since I almost always want to download the file, this is creating extra work for me (or I'm losing files, because now I have to remember to go back and Save it after I open it, or it's only stored in this temp location).