Thunderbird and handling of forwarded attachments

I use Thunderbird as a mail client, and for the most part i like it a lot. But i’ve run into a problem with forwarded attachments.

Today, my partner received an email that contained an attachment, a Word document. She forwarded the whole email, including the attachment, to me. When it arrived in Thunderbird, however, there was no attachment listed. Instead, i got an email that said

Then it gave me the text that she wrote in her email, then it had some html code and the following:

Then it had hundreds of lines of gibberish which i assume was the attachment in some form that i can’t understand.

I asked her to try again, and i went into the web interface of my email to check it out. In the online version, the attachment appeared fine, and i could open and download it without a hassle. But, again, when i imported it into Thunderbird, it turned into junk.

This does not happen when i get an attachment straight from someone. For example, she downloaded the attachment to her computer, then wrote a new email to me and attached the document herself. When it came into Thunderbird, the attachment appeared without a problem.

Obviously, when someone forwards an attachment, Thunderbird does something that i don’t understand. What i’d like to know is whether this problem is correctable, and if it is, cold someone tell me how to do it? Cheers.

Just so you know you’re not alone – I’m using Mozilla 1.7.5 and something similar happens to me occasionally. When I attach a PDF, it’s sometimes received as garbage. It’s kinda weird – sometimes it’s OK. I’ve noticed that if I attach two files at the same time (that is, using CTRL+highlight both, then attach) the PDF is unreadable. If I attach them one at a time, it’s fine.

This didn’t happen until I upgraded; versions 1.2, 1.4.x, and 1.7.3 all worked fine as far as I know. I haven’t bothered to look into it any further, since it doesn’t affect me greatly. I’m hoping that it’ll be fixed in a future upgrade; I know that 1.7.7 is out, but haven’t taken the time to install it.