Thunderbird does not show message body

1

Please is there a legitimate reason for Thunderbird 31.3.0 not to display the body of the following email?

Return-Path: <[...]@[...]>
Delivered-To: [...]@[...]
Received: [...]
[...]
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 12:05:01 +0100 (CET)
From: [...]@[...]
To: [...]@[...]
Message-ID: <[...]>
Subject: [...]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; 
    boundary="----=_Part_48790_19509989.1418987101087"

------=_Part_48790_19509989.1418987101087
Content-Type: multipart/related; 
    boundary="----=_Part_48791_10482336.1418987101088"

------=_Part_48791_10482336.1418987101088
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; 
    boundary="----=_Part_48792_15868727.1418987101088"

------=_Part_48792_15868727.1418987101088
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


------=_Part_48792_15868727.1418987101088
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<div><p>
    Dear Mr [...]
<p>
[...]
<p>
    Yours sincerely,</p>
    <p>=C2=A0</p>    <p>=C2=A0</p>    <p>=C2=A0</p>    <p>=C2=A0</p>    <p>=
ref=[...]</p></div>

------=_Part_48792_15868727.1418987101088--

------=_Part_48791_10482336.1418987101088--

------=_Part_48790_19509989.1418987101087--

The webmail client displays it and Thunderbird displays other emails just fine. Should I file a bug?

Enos D'Andrea

Posted 2014-12-21T13:59:20.090

Reputation: 130

Nope, it's the sender's fault. I suspect your sender is on a Mac. Try View > Message Body As ... > Plain Text. – Debra – 2014-12-21T15:16:44.990

Answers

0

If that is the whole message, I would say that you have TB set to display text only?

Because it looks to me as though the text/plain section is blank.

Julian Knight

Posted 2014-12-21T13:59:20.090

Reputation: 13 389

Thanks. Please do you know what RFCs say in regard to sending HTML messages with empty text/plain sections? – Enos D'Andrea – 2014-12-22T19:11:24.367

Sorry, not off the top of my head. Generally you expect the plain text part to mirror the html content. Anything else is bad practice and considered spammy. You don't have to have the plain text part, it can be omitted which is better. – Julian Knight – 2014-12-22T23:23:45.920

2

The closest I could find is RFC 1341 par. 7.2.3: each of the parts is an "alternative" version of the same information. I reported your points to the sender and pointed them here. All the best to you!

– Enos D'Andrea – 2014-12-23T10:03:17.397