I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.

The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."

What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
from my online account.

I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something, but
the error message didn't help.

--
Thank you,
Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne wrote:
> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.

Any anti-malware, anti-virus software involved?

> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."

What kind of mailbox, POP3 or IMAP?

> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
> from my online account.
>
> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something, but
> the error message didn't help.

Do you have enough disk space like mentioned in the error message? How big are the photos?

Jo-Anne <Jo-Anne@nowhere.com> wrote:

> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.
>
> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."
>
> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
> from my online account.
>
> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something, but
> the error message didn't help.

How big are the messages? Not what are the sizes of the photo files,
but how big are the e-mails themselves? All email is sent as plain
text. Any binary content gets converted to a long encoded text string
that bloats in size to about 1.3 times, or more, the size of each binary
attachment.

How much of your 100 MB quota have you consumed in your Metronet
account? If your account doesn't show how much you've used of your
online storage quota, call them to find out. That deleting those large
messages got e-mail working again indicates they were corrupted (so the
server borked on sending them to you), or you reduced your online
storage quota with their deletion, so the e-mail account started working
again after it froze up with an over-quota condition.

https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/Email-quota/td-p/1593368

You still have a Metronet account? You said "Metronet account", not
"Metronet e-mail address". See:
https://portal.metronet.co.uk/account_summary/services_summary.html?mnsession=0d154e650ab3931319cb1071bb980436
(dated 7 years ago)

On 2/13/2024 5:49 PM, Frank Miller wrote:
> Jo-Anne wrote:
>> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
>> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
>> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.
>
> Any anti-malware, anti-virus software involved?
>
>> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
>> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."
>
> What kind of mailbox, POP3 or IMAP?
>
>> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
>> from my online account.
>>
>> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something, but
>> the error message didn't help.
>
> Do you have enough disk space like mentioned in the error message? How big are the photos?

How would I know if any antivirus software was involved? I use only Windows Defender on this computer.

POP3 mailbox.

Each photo is 2 mb. How would I know how much disk space I have?

-- Thank you,
Jo-Anne

On 2/13/2024 6:09 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
> Jo-Anne <Jo-Anne@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
>> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
>> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.
>>
>> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
>> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."
>>
>> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
>> from my online account.
>>
>> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something, but
>> the error message didn't help.
>
> How big are the messages? Not what are the sizes of the photo files,
> but how big are the e-mails themselves? All email is sent as plain
> text. Any binary content gets converted to a long encoded text string
> that bloats in size to about 1.3 times, or more, the size of each binary
> attachment.

How can I tell how big the messages are?
>
> How much of your 100 MB quota have you consumed in your Metronet
> account? If your account doesn't show how much you've used of your
> online storage quota, call them to find out. That deleting those large
> messages got e-mail working again indicates they were corrupted (so the
> server borked on sending them to you), or you reduced your online
> storage quota with their deletion, so the e-mail account started working
> again after it froze up with an over-quota condition.

The online Metronet account showed the emails as coming through. They also arrived at my iPad inbox.
The only problem was with Thunderbird. From the bar at the top of my online account, it looks like I
haven't used anywhere near whatever I'm allocated--and I don't see any way to determine what my
quota is. (How did you arrive at a 100 MB quota?)
>
> https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/Email-quota/td-p/1593368
>
> You still have a Metronet account? You said "Metronet account", not
> "Metronet e-mail address". See:
> https://portal.metronet.co.uk/account_summary/services_summary.html?mnsession=0d154e650ab3931319cb1071bb980436
> (dated 7 years ago)

I'm not sure what the "still" is. The Metronet I'm using is in the U.S., and it just started up in
my area in 2020, I think.

-- Thank you!
Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne wrote:
> On 2/13/2024 5:49 PM, Frank Miller wrote:
>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
>>> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
>>> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.
>>
>> Any anti-malware, anti-virus software involved?
>>
>>> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
>>> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."
>>
>> What kind of mailbox, POP3 or IMAP?
>>
>>> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
>>> from my online account.
>>>
>>> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something, but
>>> the error message didn't help.
>>
>> Do you have enough disk space like mentioned in the error message? How big are the photos?
>
> How would I know if any antivirus software was involved? I use only Windows Defender on this computer.

"Windows Defender" *is* an antivirus software.

> POP3 mailbox.

Do you download messages from the server and delete them there? Or do you
leave them on the server?

> Each photo is 2 mb. How would I know how much disk space I have?

Check it in your operating system. I'm out of using Windows since over 12 years
now, so i can't give any hint for Windows 10.

On 2024-02-14 01:57, Jo-Anne wrote:
> On 2/13/2024 6:09 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
>> Jo-Anne <Jo-Anne@nowhere.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with
>>> two photos attached to each,
>>> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or
>>> anything that came after
>>> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account
>>> online.
>>>
>>> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make
>>> sure the file system allows
>>> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the
>>> mailbox."
>>>
>>> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird
>>> was to delete the two messages
>>> from my online account.
>>>
>>> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm
>>> guessing I overloaded something, but
>>> the error message didn't help.
>>
>> How big are the messages?  Not what are the sizes of the photo files,
>> but how big are the e-mails themselves?  All email is sent as plain
>> text.  Any binary content gets converted to a long encoded text string
>> that bloats in size to about 1.3 times, or more, the size of each binary
>> attachment.
>
> How can I tell how big the messages are?

Because Thunderbird tells you that information. You just have to enable
that field.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1139848

https://superuser.com/questions/79591/how-to-display-the-size-of-single-emails

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 2/13/2024 7:09 PM, Frank Miller wrote:
> Jo-Anne wrote:
>> On 2/13/2024 5:49 PM, Frank Miller wrote:
>>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>>> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
>>>> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
>>>> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.
>>>
>>> Any anti-malware, anti-virus software involved?
>>>
>>>> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
>>>> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."
>>>
>>> What kind of mailbox, POP3 or IMAP?
>>>
>>>> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
>>>> from my online account.
>>>>
>>>> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something, but
>>>> the error message didn't help.
>>>
>>> Do you have enough disk space like mentioned in the error message? How big are the photos?
>>
>> How would I know if any antivirus software was involved? I use only Windows Defender on this computer.
>
> "Windows Defender" *is* an antivirus software.

Yes, I know. I meant that it's the only antivirus software on this computer...

>
>> POP3 mailbox.
>
> Do you download messages from the server and delete them there? Or do you
> leave them on the server?
>
>> Each photo is 2 mb. How would I know how much disk space I have?
>
> Check it in your operating system. I'm out of using Windows since over 12 years
> now, so i can't give any hint for Windows 10.

On 2/13/2024 7:34 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> On 2024-02-14 01:57, Jo-Anne wrote:
>> On 2/13/2024 6:09 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
>>> Jo-Anne <Jo-Anne@nowhere.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
>>>> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
>>>> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.
>>>>
>>>> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
>>>> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."
>>>>
>>>> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
>>>> from my online account.
>>>>
>>>> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something,
>>>> but
>>>> the error message didn't help.
>>>
>>> How big are the messages?  Not what are the sizes of the photo files,
>>> but how big are the e-mails themselves?  All email is sent as plain
>>> text.  Any binary content gets converted to a long encoded text string
>>> that bloats in size to about 1.3 times, or more, the size of each binary
>>> attachment.
>>
>> How can I tell how big the messages are?
>
> Because Thunderbird tells you that information. You just have to enable that field.
>
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1139848
>
> https://superuser.com/questions/79591/how-to-display-the-size-of-single-emails
>

Got it. Thank you!
--
Jo-Anne

On 2024-02-14 01:09, VanguardLH wrote:
> Jo-Anne <Jo-Anne@nowhere.com> wrote:

> How much of your 100 MB quota have you consumed in your Metronet
> account? If your account doesn't show how much you've used of your
> online storage quota, call them to find out.

When using IMAP, you can find out that information by right click on the
folder, then "properties", then "Quota" tab.

On POP3, I don't know, I don't have any pop3 account to test.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

Jo-Anne <Jo-Anne@nowhere.com> wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote:
>
>> Jo-Anne <Jo-Anne@nowhere.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
>>> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
>>> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.
>>>
>>> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
>>> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."
>>>
>>> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
>>> from my online account.
>>>
>>> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something, but
>>> the error message didn't help.
>>
>> How big are the messages? Not what are the sizes of the photo files,
>> but how big are the e-mails themselves? All email is sent as plain
>> text. Any binary content gets converted to a long encoded text string
>> that bloats in size to about 1.3 times, or more, the size of each binary
>> attachment.
>
> How can I tell how big the messages are?

Answered by Carlos. Configure Tbird to show you. Or use the webmail
client to your Metronet account to check sizes there. Their webmail
client may also show how much storage quota you consumed or have left.

Since you said you sent yourself the e-mails with attached photos,
remember there will be a copy of your sent email in your Sent folder,
and a copy of the same message in your Inbox folder (unless the provider
shortcuts on emails sent to self by keeping only 1 copy).

Also, sending emails to yourself can trigger spam countermeasures. At
one time (haven't tested again in a couple years), Gmail would discard
emails from yourself sent to yourself. Spammers use that trick since
rarely do users define filter that look for the From and To headers to
specify the same recipient. They figure you don't send e-mails to
yourself, but spammers try to pretend they are you to avoid filtering.

Sending e-mails from yourself to yourself is for testing when you have
problems with an e-mail service. Since you already have the photos to
attach in the first place, there is no need to send them through e-mail
back to yourself. You end up with 2 copies of a photo, but you could
copy the photo file to a second file instead of wasting resources and
bandwidth to create a second copy.

Or, maybe "send yourself" meant you didn't want to upload the photos
anywhere online, or setup an FTP server, or use cloud sync services
(OneDrive, Google Drive, etc), but wanted to receive your self-sent
e-mails at a different location where you also have an e-mail client to
get those messages. There is no resume function in e-mail. E-mail was
not designed to be a file transfer protocol (FTP). Instead of accessing
the same-sized photo file at a different location, e-mail will bloat the
size of the photo attachments by 1.3 times, or more, their original size
since ALL e-mail is sent as text, so binary content has to get converted
to a long encoded text string. There are better methods of sharing
files with yourself at different locations than using e-mail.

>> How much of your 100 MB quota have you consumed in your Metronet
>> account?
>
> The online Metronet account showed the emails as coming through.

That would show they got received. Could you actually view (read) those
complete e-mails using their webmail client, and would their webmail
client let you save their attachments?

> They also arrived at my iPad inbox.

I don't know about Apple e-mail programs. Only touched on one on an
iPad to see it worked, but I disliked the iPad that was locked by my HMO
(who gave it to me for free), so I mailed it back to them rather than
trash it since someone else might think a locked iPad was a great thing.
iPad is a product name. Doesn't say what e-mail client you used there.

In whatever iPad e-mail client you used, is it actually a local e-mail
client, or is it a web-centric app that uses HTTPS on the backend to
show you what the webmail client shows? Also, while a local e-mail
client will use standard e-mail protocols to send or receive from the
mail servers (POP, IMAP, SMTP, Exchange/ActiveSync, etc), a web-centric
app might use a mail API to connect to the server, so different
protocols are used between client and server. Since the protocols are
different, so are the commands, and what Tbird hung on for a POP or IMAP
command might not cause a hang in a web-centric e-mail app that uses a
different protocol to receive/send e-mails from/to the server. Not all
e-mail clients use the same e-mail protocols to communicate to a mail
server.

I use eM Client, a local e-mail client. For MS Exchange/ActiveSync
(EAS) accounts (Hotmail, Outlook.com, Live.com), it uses EAS to
communicate with Microsoft's server. Alas, Microsoft made a change that
required moving away from basic authentication (although Exchange can
use secured communication) with meant I couldn't connect to EAS accounts
anymore, and had to move to IMAP to implement OAUTH2.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/microsoft-oauth-authentication-and-thunderbird-202
https://www.emclient.com/blog/microsoft-disables-basic-authentication-for-all-accounts-521

eM Client can also use Google's Mail API to communicate with the Gmail
servers instead of POP, IMAP, and SMTP. With the standard protocols,
you do e-mail. Other protocols are needed for calendar and contacts
sync between client and server, like CalDAV (extension of WebDAV) and
CardDAV, but those are more fragile than using Google's Mail API or
Microsoft's EAS, and slower. But I'm a freeloader, so when Microsoft
dropped EAS support which apparently only used basic authentication for
free accounts. EAS can use SSL/TLS encryption for login and mail
session, but apparently MS didn't set that up for free accounts, and
apparently even corporate and academic MS accounts lost EAS access.
OAUTH2 is incompatible with EAS. MS forced use of OAUTH2 by e-mail
clients. I was forced to IMAP and SMTP (with OAUTH2), and to CalDAV and
CardDAV. Their next push is to foist 2FA security theater on their
users whether the users want it or not.

> The only problem was with Thunderbird. From the bar at the top of my online account, it looks like I
> haven't used anywhere near whatever I'm allocated--and I don't see any way to determine what my
> quota is. (How did you arrive at a 100 MB quota?)

By online searching, and mention by someone in their web forums, like:

https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/Email-quota/td-p/1593368
(c.2018)

Their online help doesn't mention quotas, but I didn't look that hard.
Quotas will be different for free versus paid accounts. Which do you
have?

Since I don't have an account there to login, there might be information
revealed to their customers that non-customers cannot see. You can use
their web form to ask them for more details on quotas, spam measures,
and other operational parameters of their e-mail service to ensure you
don't violate their hidden restrictions which could result in suspension
of your account (maybe for 24 hours, maybe until they choose to unlock).

https://support.metronet.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Their AUP (https://www.metronet.com/aup-privacy#aup-email) says nothing
about quotas or anti-spam measures, so their customers apparently are
blindfolded and don't discover a well until they run into it. No
service is infinite.

>> https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/Email-quota/td-p/1593368
>>
>> You still have a Metronet account? You said "Metronet account", not
>> "Metronet e-mail address". See:
>> https://portal.metronet.co.uk/account_summary/services_summary.html?mnsession=0d154e650ab3931319cb1071bb980436
>> (dated 7 years ago)
>
> I'm not sure what the "still" is.

Acquired in 2005 by Plusnet, I wouldv'e thought by now that they
would've retired (not renewed their lease) on the Metronet domain name.
What is the domain portion in your e-mail address?

> The Metronet I'm using is in the U.S., and it just started up in
> my area in 2020, I think.

https://digital-lifestyles.info/2005/11/28/metronet-bought-by-plusnet-in-17m-uk-broadband-deal/

Plusnet probably kept the lease (domain registrations) on the Metronet
domains, so you might not know you are using Plusnet instead of
Metronet.

If you cannot find your quotas (how many emails per day, max daily
bandwidth for all emails per day, max size of outbound emails, max size
of inbound emails, when your account gets frozen when there are too many
rejects on your outbound e-mails, and other limits), those are good
questions to pose to their tech support.

"A man's got to know his limitations" (Clint Eastwood, Magnum Force,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uki4lrLzRaU).

"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote:
>
>> Jo-Anne <Jo-Anne@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>> How much of your 100 MB quota have you consumed in your Metronet
>> account? If your account doesn't show how much you've used of your
>> online storage quota, call them to find out.
>
> When using IMAP, you can find out that information by right click on the
> folder, then "properties", then "Quota" tab.
>
> On POP3, I don't know, I don't have any pop3 account to test.

Didn't know there were IMAP commands to ask the server to report quota
max and consumption. Hunted around, and found:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9208/

Not ratified (c.2022, status = "proposed standard") which obsoletes RFC
2087 (c.1997, status "proposed standard" still after 27 years).

I didn't find an extension RFC for POP3 that added commands to get quota
from a POP3 server.

Thanks for that info. Very helpful. However, it's not always
available. Depends if the server sends back a report. I have 3 e-mail
accounts in my client (eM Client). Microsoft forced be away from EAS
(Exchange/ActiveSync) to IMAP which I mention in my reply to Jo-Anne.
So, I right-clicked on the 3 IMAP accounts, and selected Properties.
While there was a Quota tab, it wasn't always populated.

Hotmail: "There are no storage quotas on this folder" (*)
Gmail: "4.9 MB of 15.0 GB used" (**)
Comcast: "89 kB of 10.1 GB used" (***)

(*) Not true. My MS account has a max storage quota of 15 GB. When
Microsoft chopped the default storage quota for free accounts from 15 GB
down to only 5 GB, they sent a notice to use their webmail client to
login to retain the old quota, so my Hotmail account got grandfathered
to keep the old larger quota. The MS quota is shared across all MS
services to which an MS account has access, like e-mail and OneDrive.
Going to OneDrive shows I've used 0.8 GB of 15 GB. So the Quota tab for
the IMAP account isn't getting anything useful. Guess MS isn't yet
supporting the RFC extension that adds quota reporting.

(**) Free Gmail accounts get a 15 GB quota which is shared between
e-mail, Google Drive, and photos. Gmail is a secondary account for me,
so not much is kept there. Trash folder gets emptied after 30 days. I
emptied the Sent folder of 31 items, and then deleted forever (won't be
under All Mails) the Trash folder again. Storage quota went to 3.6 MB.
I went to the [Google] Drive web client, but nothing listed there.
Clicked the "Clean up space" button. There was a photo there, so it got
deleted, and I got 3.6 MB back. Wowee! Still showed 2.7 KB used, so
perhaps that's for some overhead.

(***) Delete a message in the Trash folder, and another in Sent. All
other folders were empty. Quota went to "20 kB of 10.1 GB used". So,
again, apparently a little bit for overhead.

Jo-Anne wrote:

> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account

In reality that's a Plusnet account now

> with two photos attached to each, but Thunderbird on my Windows 10
> computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account
> online.

I think you only have a 1GB limit on mailbox storage, sometimes you
might need to logon to the webmail interface to empty stuff out.

> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make
> sure the file system allows you write privileges, and you have enough
> disk space to copy the mailbox."
>
> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was
> to delete the two messages from my online account.
>
> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing
> I overloaded something, but the error message didn't help.

I would start planning to move to a different email provider in the
medium term. Plusnet no longer supply a mailbox to new customers, have
made noises about possibly shutting them down for existing customers,
and from what my neighbour was told during a recent support call, they
don't do much maintenance on the servers now ...

Jo-Anne wrote:

> The Metronet I'm using is in the U.S.

Ah, ignore everything I said before, that was regarding the Metronet
which used to exist here in the UK

Am 14.02.24 um 08:32 schrieb Andy Burns:
>
> Jo-Anne wrote:
>
>> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account
>
> In reality that's a Plusnet account now
>
>> with two photos attached to each, but Thunderbird on my Windows 10
>> computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
>> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account
>> online.
>
> I think you only have a 1GB limit on mailbox storage, sometimes you
> might need to logon to the webmail interface to empty stuff out.

That is exactly the reason why IMAP should be used instead of POP3. Then
it can be done at the PC or the smartphone.

--
"Gutta cavat lapidem." (Ovid)

On 2/13/2024 8:38 PM, Jo-Anne wrote:
> On 2/13/2024 7:09 PM, Frank Miller wrote:
>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>> On 2/13/2024 5:49 PM, Frank Miller wrote:
>>>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>>>> I recently sent myself a couple messages on my Metronet account with two photos attached to each,
>>>>> but Thunderbird on my Windows 10 computer wouldn't download them or anything that came after
>>>>> them--although they did appear on my iPad and in my Metronet account online.
>>>>
>>>> Any anti-malware, anti-virus software involved?
>>>>
>>>>> The error message was "Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows
>>>>> you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox."
>>>>
>>>> What kind of mailbox, POP3 or IMAP?
>>>>
>>>>> What finally worked to get other messages to download in Thunderbird was to delete the two messages
>>>>> from my online account.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd be grateful if someone could explain why this happened. I'm guessing I overloaded something, but
>>>>> the error message didn't help.
>>>>
>>>> Do you have enough disk space like mentioned in the error message? How big are the photos?
>>>
>>> How would I know if any antivirus software was involved? I use only Windows Defender on this computer.
>>
>> "Windows Defender" *is* an antivirus software.
>
> Yes, I know. I meant that it's the only antivirus software on this computer...
>
>>
>>> POP3 mailbox.
>>
>> Do you download messages from the server and delete them there? Or do you
>> leave them on the server?
>>
>>> Each photo is 2 mb. How would I know how much disk space I have?
>>
>> Check it in your operating system. I'm out of using Windows since over 12 years
>> now, so i can't give any hint for Windows 10.
>

For a 2 megabyte image file, it's not a file system issue.

Windows eats 10-20 times that much, just sitting there "thinking".
It never stops writing trace files to C: for example. It's a glutton.
A 2 megabyte file is smaller than Windows dining habits.

You use "diskmgmt.msc", available in Windows 10 via a right-click
of the Start icon. "Disk Management" is the seventh item down in
the menu. The executable command "diskmgmt.msc" allows you to
start it, if the GUI is not handy at the moment.

[Picture] (Click to clarify...)

https://i.postimg.cc/BZmg0HS5/Windows-How-Full.gif

Process Monitor is a program from the Microsoft site, that records
all the processes on the machine while they do stuff.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

The File menu in the program, has a "radio button" that is not particularly well
designed, which stops trace collection. Once you've recorded the error, plus another
20 seconds worth of activity, you can stop the trace, and work on your filtering.

The Filter menu, reduces the clutter in the trace, when you're looking
for particular things. For example

Process is Thunderbird.exe Include
Operation is CreateFile Include
Operation is ReadFile Include
Operation is WriteFile Include

You would start Process Monitor first, then start Thunderbird.
Then attempt to reproduce the error in question.

Try to receive the email and unpack the attachment. As you're doing
this, the "errant" operation will be recorded in the trace. While
a lot of file operations will have a status of Success, something
in there may indicate it didn't work. And you would then discover
the filename of said item, and see if you can make sense of why
there is no space for it. It's likely a permission issue, or, it's
writing in a silly place (like the root of C: is not a good place).

I would prepare some more test emails, then collect the Process Monitor
trace and see if you can make sense of the failure.

Traces are very "noisy", and it's true, if someone complains about
the level of noise, it's very hard to figure stuff out. But I suspect
this one will be slightly easier than average. "Something" has obviously
been staged in the wrong part of the file system. But we can't guess from
here, how you've managed to do that.

Paul

On 2024-02-14 05:43, VanguardLH wrote:
> Jo-Anne <Jo-Anne@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>> VanguardLH wrote:

....

> Since you said you sent yourself the e-mails with attached photos,
> remember there will be a copy of your sent email in your Sent folder,
> and a copy of the same message in your Inbox folder (unless the provider
> shortcuts on emails sent to self by keeping only 1 copy).
>
> Also, sending emails to yourself can trigger spam countermeasures. At
> one time (haven't tested again in a couple years), Gmail would discard
> emails from yourself sent to yourself.

Oh, no, gmail is a different issue. gmail deletes any duplicate email.
If you send yourself an email, the second one is a duplicate, so it is
deleted.

They detect the duplicates by comparing the Message-ID field.

This is a problem with mail lists, because when you send an email to a
mail list, you never see your own post, so you don't know if it actually
got posted.

Also, when people answer you, by writing your gmail address and the list
adress, you only see the copy that gets to gmail first, usually the
direct one, not the mail list one.

....

--
Cheers, Carlos.