Attachment Extractor for Thunderbird

I encounter a situation recently where I had to extract about forty emails with attachments in Thunderbird. Doing so manually would waste a lot oft time and I decided to look for a way to extract all the attachments automatically. instead to save time for this operation and future operations as well.
Thankfully genbeta posted a link to the Thunderbird Attachment Extractor extension the other day which can be used to extract multiple file attachments in Thunderbird automatically.
The extension makes it easy to extract multiple attachments at once. Just select all the mails that have attachments that you want to save to your system and right-click afterwards.
The option to extract them either to the default Thunderbird directory or to another location can be selected from the context menu. You may want to configure the Attachment Extractor before you use it though.
You can for instance add potentially dangerous file types to a filter so that attachments that are executable are not saved, add a default save path or define which action should take place if a file name already exists.
Installation is a little bit trickier than installing extensions in Firefox. You have to download the xpi file and install it directly in Thunderbird by going to Tools > Extensions > Install. Choose the downloaded file and it will be installed automatically at the next start.
Update: Attachment Extractor is now hosted on the official Mozilla Add-ons repository for Thunderbird. The way you install the extension in the email client has changed slightly. You need to download the extension from the Mozilla website first by right-clicking on the download link and selecting the Save As option from the context menu.
In Thunderbird click on Tools > Add-ons > Extensions, and there on the small menu icon next to the Search all add-ons field at the top. Select Install add-on from file and pick the file you have just downloaded. The extension installs then automatically and you need to restart the browser before it becomes activated.
You do not need the extension if you want to save multiple extensions from a single email. Just click on the save all link in this case when the email is open to save all mails attached to it to your local system.
It is however excellent if you have received multiple emails with attachments, and want to save them all to your system.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!