Actually photos in emails are attachments, but I thought I would explicitly state them in the title of this section to make it easier to find. The process is identical for saving a spreadsheet or a document as it is for saving a picture or graphic. The only difference is that you might want to save them in different places and you will need to use different applications to view, change and print them.
Identifying Emails with Attachments
An email with an attachment will be identifiable in Thunderbird by the paper clip icon in the column to the left of the subject. You can make it easier to find messages with attachments, especially if you have a long list of emails in your in box; click on the paper clip in the column header in order to sort the emails so that all of the ones with paper clips, that is attachments, are at the top or the bottom of the list of emails. Click once to sort with the emails with attachments at the top and click again to sort them to the bottom.
Figure 1: Email messages with attachments show a paper clip icon to the left of the subject.
Viewing the Email and Pictures
The email content appears in the message pane when you click on the desired message in the list of messages. You can scroll down the message in the message pane to see pictures that are attached. Documents do not appear in line with the email message. Notice that the attachment pane, which is underneath the message pane, contains a list of all the attachments to the message. In this case two JPEG pictures are attached to the email.
Pictures that appear in-line with the message are shown at full size and are usually too big to view all at once. Thunderbird does not have any option that will size the pictures for viewing at a more appropriate size.
Saving the Attachment
There are two starting points from which to save an attachment or picture. You can right click on the name of the attachment in the attachment pane or, for pictures only, you can scroll down to where you can view the picture itself and then right click on the picture.
Figure 2: Right click on the name of the attachment you wish to save and then click on Save-as.
Either way displays a pop-up menu that has a Save As option. Click on Save As and a file menu is displayed.
Figure 3: The file window allows you to select a location in which to save the file and to change the name of the file. Click on "Browse for other folders" for more options.
This file menu allows you to save the file in one of a few standard folders and to change the name of the file.Click on the drop-down box that says “Desktop” to show a list of those standard folders.
I strongly recommend that you click on “Browse for other folders” as it gives you much better control over where you can store the file, including the ability to create new folders or sub-folders.
I also recommend very strongly that you never ever store files on the Desktop itself. This clutters the desktop and makes it difficult to find files. I suggest storing them in one of the standard folders or a related subfolder. The standard folders are:
- Documents
- Music
- Pictures
- Videos
- Downloads
After clicking on “Browse for other folders” you can select one of these or use the file menu to navigate to a more appropriate location in which to store the attachment. For a document, you should choose the Documents directory, for a picture, choose the Pictures folder, and so on.
Figure 4: Use the expanded file management menu to select a location in which to store the attachment.
If you are like me, you will want to store those vacation pictures in a sub-folder named something like 06-2009-Vacation so that all your vacation pictures from June 2009 will be easily locatable in one place.
Sub-folders of the Pictures folder would show up in the right-hand panel. In order to save a picture into a sub-folder, double click on the sub-folder to enter it. Once you have selected the desired folder, click on the Save button to complete the task.
For more details on using the standard file manager, see the document Using the Standard KDE File Manager to save files and especially how to navigate and how to create new folders.