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If I drag an email message from Thunderbird to a text file I get a link that looks like this:

mailbox:///Users/chaimpeck/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/347pno97.default/Mail/tnrglobal.com/Inbox?number=81319423

I would think that the "mailbox://" protocol will identify Thunderbird and open the message in it. However it does not recognize the protocol and does nothing.

I am using 10.6

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Feb 6 '11 at 1:35

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2 Answers

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There's no way to fix this issue - Thunderbird doesn't store the messages as text files on disk.

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Then what's with the "mailbox://" protocol? There must be some way to force the system to let Thunderbird handle items with that protocol. Otherwise why would it export like that on a drag-and-drop? – jeffp Feb 4 '11 at 3:24
Note, I just experimented with this and it appears that Mozilla SeaMonkey knows exactly what to do with the "mailbox://" protocol and opens the message no problem in it's browser. Now I'm just looking for a way to make that happen in Firefox or Chrome... – jeffp Feb 4 '11 at 6:47
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up vote 1 down vote accepted

I think I came up with a solution.

I downloaded a copy of Mozilla SeaMonkey and tried to paste in the above URL and it worked!

Now I still had the problem of that you have to manually paste it into SeaMonkey.

I then searched and searched and found this tool called "More Internet": http://www.monkeyfood.com/software/moreInternet/ (I had to use the alternate download link at the bottom of the page)

It allowed me to configure SeaMonkey to be the default handler of any URL that begins with the "mailbox://" protocol.

And that did it!

Now when I drag an email from Thunderbird to another application where it is rendered as a URL, I can click on that URL to bring up the email in SeaMonkey.

I would still like a solution that forces Thunderbird to handle this link, but this is good enough for now.

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Ironically Thunderbird is capable of dragging out these links that are readable by SeaMonkey, but SeaMonkey cannot drag out these links. So you need both applications. – jeffp Feb 4 '11 at 7:28
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