A user of Eudora 4.2 reported that she was unable to open attachments in email messages. When I checked her system I found that I could not open attachments by double-clicking on them, if the attachment's filename had a space in it, but I could open attachments that did not have spaces in the names. Also, when I moved the cursor over the attachment name in the message, I saw
%25%20 representing the spaces
in the file names, e.g. "Pulte Contact Information.xls" appeared
as "Pulte%25%20Contact%25%20Information.xls". The attachments were
stored in M:\attach, so I saw the following when I moved the
cursor over that file:
file:///M:/attach/Pulte%25%20Contact%25%20Information.xlsWhen I double-clicked on the attachment, I saw the following error message.
| M:\attach\Pulte%20Contact%20Information.xls |
|
Windows cannot find 'M:\attach\Pulte%20Contact%20Information.xls'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search.
|
A percent sign followed by 20, i.e. %20, is often used to represent
a space in filenames within HTML documents, but I didn't know why %25%20 was
appearing.
At Corrup path to mail attachments: includes %2520, I found someone reporting a similar problem. A respondent to the original poster provided the following comment:
This happens only when you "use Microsoft's viewer," which means that every email window is actually an Internet Explorer window, in which spaces are not allowed in URLs.
%25 itself represents the character "%" - so after one interpretation by the browser, %2520 becomes %20, which when interpreted a second time represents one space.
However, I get only forward slashes [/] in my paths when using this mode, which also begin with file:///C:/... [three initial forward slashes]
When not "using Microsoft's viewer," then you get backward slashes [\] and the path is file://C:\... [with no %, just spaces]
That described what I saw. I saw forward slashes for the full directory path when I hovered the mouse over the attachment name, but backslashes were listed in the error message that appeared.
Someone else suggested unchecking "Use Microsoft Viewer" in "Tools|Options|ViewingMail". I clicked on Tools, Options, and selected Viewing Mail. I saw the following:
I unchecked "Use Microsoft's viewer". After closing and reopening Eudora, I was then able to view attachments with spaces in the filenames by double-clicking on them. I noticed that Eudora was now displaying backslashes in the filenames, which is the convention used by Microsoft Windows, when I moved the mouse over them instead of the forward slashes it showed previously.
