For those who have made the switch from Eudora to Thunderbird, it is important to understand that Thunderbird handles attachments in a significantly different way.

Eudora
When an e-mail with an attachment is received in Eudora, it strips the attachment from the e-mail, and puts it into its own “Attachments” folder.

• The good thing about this practice is that attachments do not clutter your Inbox.
• The bad thing is that many people do not know where the Attachments are stored, and don’t realize that if they delete the e-mail, the attachment remains in this folder. Consequently, the Eudora Attachments folder is often full of hundreds, even thousands, of files, many of them virus infected attachments that were not deleted when the offending e-mail was deleted.

Thunderbird
Thunderbird keeps the attachment attached to the e-mail it came with. This means that if you want to open the attachment again, and again, you can do so by opening the original e-mail.

• If you want to keep a copy of the attachment, it is necessary to choose “Save” rather than “Open” when you click on the attachment in Thunderbird. By using the “Save” option, you can put the file in a folder of your choice.
• If you decide after opening an attachment that you wish to save it, do so by going to the File menu, and select “Save As”, then choose a folder location. (The default “Save” folder may be a temporary folder, and the attachment will be lost.)
• If you delete the e-mail though, and have not saved the attachment, it is lost along with the e-mail.

If you have any questions about this, contact the Help Desk (x5418).