How to Open Email Attachments in Thunderbird

The Mozilla Thunderbird email client is intended to act as a free replacement for more popular email programs such as the Microsoft Outlook express client. Like any other email client, you can use Thunderbird to send and receive attached files with a normal text email message. If someone has sent you a message with an attached file, you can either save the file to your computer to be opened later or you can open it directly from the email.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. 
   The "Get Mail" Button

   Open the Mozilla Thunderbird email client by double-clicking on its desktop icon. Click on the icon of an arrow pointing toward a box labeled as "Get Mail." Choose the "Get All Mail Messages" option from the drop-down menu that will appear below the icon. Wait for your incoming messages to finish downloading to your computer.

2. Scroll through the emails in the panel on the right side of the window, and locate the one that has the attachment you want to open. Double-click the subject heading of the email to open a new window containing the email message.

3. 
   The "File" Menu

   Click on the "File" menu at the top-left corner of the email's window. Scroll down through the drop-down menu and click on the "Attachments" option. Find the attachment you want to open in the list of attached files and click on it.

4. Choose the "Save All" option from the menu screen if you want to save the attached files to your hard drive. Locate the specific folder where you want the attached file to be saved and click on it. Click on "Save" to transfer the attachment from the email to your hard drive.

5. Choose the "Open" option if you want to directly open the file for immediate viewing instead of saving it to your hard drive.

Tips & Warnings

• The Mozilla Thunderbird email client will open the attached file with whatever software program you have set to the default for that particular type of file. For example, if you have Microsoft Word set as the default program for opening text documents, it will use Microsoft Word to bring up any attached text files. If you don't have a default program set for the type of file, the Thunderbird program will bring up a new window asking you to specify what program to use.
• Email attachments are one of the most frequent ways that virus programs are spread between computers. Only open attached files from people that you trust, and always scan any attached file that you save with your virus scanning program before opening it.

References

• Thunderbird Support