Assume I just installed the newest TB Portable on Win 7.
I did not define any accounts until now.
Now I have an external file samplemsg.eml which I extracted from another email client program resp. got from a Thunderbird installation on another computer.
Now I want to view the content of this samplemsg.eml email with TB Portable:
How can I do this?
Dragging it onto the TB Portable window does not help.
I miss a menu "open message file" or similar.
If I double click on it it is opened by another (my default) email client (=I don't want this).
Maybe I can pass the *.eml file as parameter on the command line to TB Portable?
How would this command look like?
How else can I do this?
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From a quick Google, it looks like Thunderbird can't handle .eml files without an addon installed. Check out this post on the Mozilla support forum for info.
Hmm, I have another (non-portable) Thunderbird installation on another Windows computer and WITHOUT installed ImportExportTools AddOn and it CAN display *.eml files.
So in general this is possible.
I need a way to force portable TB to display it
A lot of mixed messages about this - it seems that it potentially depends on which program created the EML file.
If it was created by Outlook (Express?) you can only drag/drop it into Thunderbird on a computer that has Outlook (Express?) installed. Not sure if this fits your particular case or not, but it may help.
So ok, I created an *.eml message file from a Thunderbird on another computer.
Even this file cannot be shown with portable TB.
When I try to drag it onto the TB windows it does not accept it. Its not draggable since TB seems to NOT offer a corresponding recognition procedure.
Non-portable TB CAN recognize it.
So there seems to be something messed up while Portable TB is generated from PortableApps.
The proper way to open an EML is to click the hamburger menu and then File - Open - Saved Message
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Drop it on the portable launcher or a shortcut to it, which could be more convenient.
By opening eml files (created by Thunderbird PE) this way, on my Win-8.1 system, I have not encountered any issues.
Plus, I also have tested it using renamed launchers, again without any problems.
Added by EDIT:
Funny that just after posting the above, I've found an issue, that is, the method won't work if an another instance of Thunderbird is already running.
Then, even with the same instance sometimes it still does not work, I think with older portable launcher. Obviously, I need to run more tests, perhaps including using ini file with the "AllowMultipleInstances=true" option.
EDIT 2:
Regarding why sometimes it did not open an eml file even whith the same instance of the app already running, I've found the cause of this confusing issue, when testing using shortcuts with a command line parameter, in my case being it the "-offline" parameter. Using a clean shortcut, without such parameter, does not cause this problem.