Where did you install Firefox from? Help Mozilla uncover 3rd party websites that offer problematic Firefox installation by taking part in our campaign. There will be swag, and you'll be featured in our blog if you manage to report at least 10 valid reports!

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

Tbird attempts to open PDFs with Powerpoint regardless of option setting

  • 2 vastust
  • 1 on selline probleem
  • 9 views
  • Viimati vastas mdb8080

more options

Tbird 52.3 on Win 7. PDF in attachments. Tbird attempts to open it with MS PowerPoint. So I change the Tools / Options / Attachments setting -- which was set to Acrobat -- to Always Ask. No change. I stop and restart Tbird -- no change. I delete the PDF entry entirely -- no change. I stop and restart Tbird -- no change. Right-clicking the PDF only gives me "Open" and "Save As" as options. There is no "Open With" that I could use to force a dialog box, potentially with an option to "Always do this ..." option box.

Am I missing something?

Tbird 52.3 on Win 7. PDF in attachments. Tbird attempts to open it with MS PowerPoint. So I change the Tools / Options / Attachments setting -- which was set to Acrobat -- to Always Ask. No change. I stop and restart Tbird -- no change. I delete the PDF entry entirely -- no change. I stop and restart Tbird -- no change. Right-clicking the PDF only gives me "Open" and "Save As" as options. There is no "Open With" that I could use to force a dialog box, potentially with an option to "Always do this ..." option box. Am I missing something?

Valitud lahendus

Outside of T-bird, PDF opened in Acrobat Reader, just as desired.

SOLVED. (but only for the brave)

I found the following lines in mimeTypes.rdf: (in \Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<profile> )

<RDF:Description

   RDF:about="urn:mimetype:externalApplication:text/plain; charset=utf-8"
                  NC:prettyName="POWERPNT.EXE"
                  NC:path="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\POWERPNT.EXE" />

Removing these lines from the file fixed the problem. I have no idea why or how plain text files became associated with powerpoint. I also have no idea why or how PDFs came to be viewed as plain text files, but presumably this is because I deleted the PDF association entirely, so if I had looked at (known to look at) mimeTypes.rdf before I had done this, I probably would have found a line similar to the above specifying that PDFs be opened with PowerPoint.

Note that there were/are other lines in mimeTypes referring to MSOffice programs which operate correctly and have rather differently worded parameters:

 <RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:application/msword" ...
</pre>

and

 <RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:handler:application/msword" ...
</pre>

and

 <RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document" ...
</pre>


So now my mimeTypes.rdf has no specific association for PDF files and they open in Acrobat Reader though some magic default procedure.

It still bothers me that I don't have access to an "Open With ..." option when right-clicking the attachment, and also that there is no explicit "Add ..." option to create a file association _de novo_.

Finally, in some cases it's actually useful to have 2 file associations easily available for a given file type. For example, a .jpeg is most easily viewed (on Windows) in Preview, because this applet is quick and small. But if I want to edit that image, I would use, in my case, Corel Photo-Paint. But this is probably asking for a lot, since no OS to my knowledge splits such functionality.

Loe vastust kontekstis 👍 0

All Replies (2)

more options

Can you confirm that if you double click a pdf, outside of Thunderbird, it opens as you'd expect, in your preferred pdf reader?

more options

Valitud lahendus

Outside of T-bird, PDF opened in Acrobat Reader, just as desired.

SOLVED. (but only for the brave)

I found the following lines in mimeTypes.rdf: (in \Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<profile> )

<RDF:Description

   RDF:about="urn:mimetype:externalApplication:text/plain; charset=utf-8"
                  NC:prettyName="POWERPNT.EXE"
                  NC:path="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\POWERPNT.EXE" />

Removing these lines from the file fixed the problem. I have no idea why or how plain text files became associated with powerpoint. I also have no idea why or how PDFs came to be viewed as plain text files, but presumably this is because I deleted the PDF association entirely, so if I had looked at (known to look at) mimeTypes.rdf before I had done this, I probably would have found a line similar to the above specifying that PDFs be opened with PowerPoint.

Note that there were/are other lines in mimeTypes referring to MSOffice programs which operate correctly and have rather differently worded parameters:

 <RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:application/msword" ...
</pre>

and

 <RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:handler:application/msword" ...
</pre>

and

 <RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document" ...
</pre>


So now my mimeTypes.rdf has no specific association for PDF files and they open in Acrobat Reader though some magic default procedure.

It still bothers me that I don't have access to an "Open With ..." option when right-clicking the attachment, and also that there is no explicit "Add ..." option to create a file association _de novo_.

Finally, in some cases it's actually useful to have 2 file associations easily available for a given file type. For example, a .jpeg is most easily viewed (on Windows) in Preview, because this applet is quick and small. But if I want to edit that image, I would use, in my case, Corel Photo-Paint. But this is probably asking for a lot, since no OS to my knowledge splits such functionality.