can Thunderbird reveal subject and sender BEFORE attachment download?

[Larry Smith]

Hi,
I use Thunderbird 0.4 and have few complaints about it.
I am still using a dialup service and occ'ly friends send fairly long
attachments to me, esp'ly family photos.

When I check for mail T'bird just sits there and starts to download
this long attachment but w/o revealing the subject and sender.
Is there a setting or extension I could use so that I could know this
info as the attachment is coming in.

Once in a while I wait 5-10 minutes for something to come in only to
discard it immediately. It would be a time saver to know what's
coming in before, or at least during, the download.

TIA

 

[Matias]

I use Thunderbird 0.4 and have few complaints about it.

I *highly* recommend upgrading to Thunderbird 1.0, or you can wait a bit
and get version 1.0.1 which, as I understand it, is not far from being
released.

Is there a setting or extension I could use so that I could know this
info as the attachment is coming in.

I don't know about Thunderbird 0.4, but in version 1.0 it is possible to
download only headers when checking mail. This setting can be found under

Account Settings > [desired account] > Server Settings > Fetch headers only


HTH,
Matias

 

[Larry Smith]

I use Thunderbird 0.4 and have few complaints about it.

I *highly* recommend upgrading to Thunderbird 1.0, or you can wait a bit
and get version 1.0.1 which, as I understand it, is not far from being
released.

Is there a setting or extension I could use so that I could know this
info as the attachment is coming in.

I don't know about Thunderbird 0.4, but in version 1.0 it is possible to
download only headers when checking mail. This setting can be found under

Account Settings > [desired account] > Server Settings > Fetch headers only


HTH,
Matias

thanks for the feedback.
Just checked that my version does not have Fetch headers only option.
Perhaps I will upgrade....another long download. Drat.

 

[leftymills]

When I check for mail T'bird just sits there and starts to download
this long attachment but w/o revealing the subject and sender.

Once in a while I wait 5-10 minutes for something to come in only to
discard it immediately.

<snip>

Solutions to this problem have been discussed here several times, but
it wouldn't hurt for me to outline what I remember about solving it.
1) go to http://www.mail2web.com/ and log in - free
For your messages you will see -sender- subject - date - size -
delete what you want. Read, answer and delete other messages that you
do not want to keep. Then go to Thunderbird and download what you want
to keep.

2) use Mailwasher - the last free version has been discussed here many
times. It will do what mail2web will do, and then automatically switch
you to Thunderbird.

3) consider anyother email program. Foxmail lets you read the sender -
subject- and -size while your messages are still on your server. Just
delete what you don't want.

Pimmy - last freeware version 3.5 - will do do what Foxmail does and
lets you read the first 200 lines of a message while it is still on
your server.

It is a big disappointment to me that Thunderbird is so far behind the
above-mentioned solutions.

L

 

[123]

Is there a setting or extension I could use so that I could know this
info as the attachment is coming in.

Doesn't Thunderbird have mail filters? If it doesn't, then... wow,
that's primitive -- how does it expect to compete against the big boys?

 

[schrodinger's cat]

When I check for mail T'bird just sits there and starts to download
this long attachment but w/o revealing the subject and sender.
Is there a setting or extension I could use so that I could know this
info as the attachment is coming in.

Look under Tools/Account Settings to see if there is a Disk Space
option in version 0.4. If so, set it not to download messages over 50k
or so.

 

[wald]

Doesn't Thunderbird have mail filters? If it doesn't, then...
wow, that's primitive -- how does it expect to compete against
the big boys?

Sure, TBird has mail filters. But I fail to see how those are going
to solve the OP's problem...

Regards,
Wald

 

[wald]

Hi,
I use Thunderbird 0.4 and have few complaints about it.
I am still using a dialup service and occ'ly friends send fairly
long attachments to me, esp'ly family photos.

When I check for mail T'bird just sits there and starts to
download this long attachment but w/o revealing the subject and
sender. Is there a setting or extension I could use so that I
could know this info as the attachment is coming in.

As already mentioned, more recent versions of Thunderbird have a
"Fetch Headers Only" option that seems to be what you need.

Wait a few days with the download, TBird 1.0.1 is planned for
release somewhere this week.

Regards,
Wald

 

[Chrissy Cruiser]

Doesn't Thunderbird have mail filters? If it doesn't, then... wow,
that's primitive -- how does it expect to compete against the big boys?

Filters only work on incoming mail.

 

[Larry Smith]

Look under Tools/Account Settings to see if there is a Disk Space
option in version 0.4. If so, set it not to download messages over 50k
or so.

That option is available but actually wouldn't be real helpful because
I want and need some of the attachments that are sent me while others
I know I don't want.
The Fetch headers idea is a good one and now I'm leaning to DL'ing the
updated version of T'bird in a few days.

I thank all for the feedback.

 

[schrodinger's cat]

That option is available but actually wouldn't be real helpful because
I want and need some of the attachments that are sent me while others
I know I don't want.

You do realize that after using this setting to get truncated messages
you can then download the full messages and attachments of the ones
you want? The advantage to this method is that many plain text
messages will be under the 50k limit, so you won't have the extra step
of first getting the headers and then the messages for those. This
would be true for version 1.0 also, although I would recommend you
download that anyway for additional improvements over 0.4.

 

[Helium]

Hi,
I use Thunderbird 0.4 and have few complaints about it.
When I check for mail T'bird just sits there and starts to download
this long attachment but w/o revealing the subject and sender.
Is there a setting or extension I could use so that I could know this
info as the attachment is coming in.

Once in a while I wait 5-10 minutes for something to come in only to
discard it immediately. It would be a time saver to know what's
coming in before, or at least during, the download.

Why not just telnet to your mail server, invoke pine (most ISPs use it),
and then check the headers, sizes of your email, etc. You can delete
any email on the server that you don't want. Exit Pine and then bring up
t'bird to get your email from the server. I've been doing this for a long
time. HTH, He2
p.s. Pine, like most telnet clients, is very easy to use.