Adding Attachments cause Send to fail and progrm to lock up

I am a new paid user to Pandora and I have the latest version, 5.1.0.1.
I can receive emails OK.
I can send emails WITHOUT attachments OK.

However as soon as I try to send an email with an attachment I get the following errors:

1. After clicking the Send button and WARNING message box opens up that says:
"A message must have at least one recipient before it can be queued and sent"
Subject:

2. Then in the Log file viewer there is an entry that says:
"Task: Mailbox File Access
Details: Mailbox Out can not be accessed at this time.
Mailbox content file: mailboxes\Out.mf\Out.mbc
Mailbox index file: mailboxes\Out.mf\Out.mbi
Time: Monday, April 24, 16:27"

3. The the program is locked up -
a. For instance the In Mail box listing cannot be closed
b. Other mail boxes cannot be opened
c. Checking email seems to work
d. Composing mail does not work
e. there is a green blinking oen envelop in the right hand area of the bottom notification bar between two text labels that say "ATN blinking Green envelope icon PEN"
When the Icon is clicked an empty windows box with the label IN opens. The box has no window controls so cannot be closed.
e. Attempts to exit or close the pogrom fail
f. The only way to close the program is to use task manager and kill the process

First the recipient is valid and there is access to the Out mail boxes as the SAME email without the attachment is sent properly.

Is there some thing I am doing wrong?
Is anyone else having issues with sending attachments.

Thank you
-ed

User Fliphnds is having a quite different problem with Windows 11, see https://pandoramail.forumotion.net/t280-windows-problem-message-on-pandora-load so please add which Windows version you're using.

I don't have an answer for this, but have occasionally seen a similar message. Windows does inscrutable things at times, this is the sort of thing that might be operating system related (or might not).

I am on a windows 10 box fully patched.
I am not having the issue mentioned in the link you provided.
I assume no one else is having issue with using attachments?

I guess I will try installing on another box and use a different email account and see what happens.

Another time sink
-ed

I'm on Windows 10 too, and usually have no issues with attachments.

Random thoughts, which might or might not be causing this ...

1. Did you install Pandora Mail via "Run as Administrator"? Try reinstalling over the top of the existing installation using "Run as Administrator" and see if that helps.

2. Do you launch Pandora Mail via "Run as Administrator" or as a non-Administrator?

My thinking is that Windows 10 perhaps is objecting to the attachment being added to the Attachments folder inside Pandora, and running as Administrator might overcome this, with the more recent Windows versions being very fussy about permissions. Try installing Pandora in a folder that is not a sub-folder of Program Files -- or Program Files (x86) -- which is how I do it.

Or something along those lines.

Thank you for your help Tony.
Here is what I discovered:
1. Before doing a new install, I tried redirecting and forwarding a received email that had an attachment. Those both worked flawlessly. It only failed when I attempted to add an attachment to a new email.

2, I then tried to do a fresh install on another computer running windows 10, fully patched as well. In this case I just took the all defaults. The installed failed towards the end with errors about not having access to the windows default program area for x64 programs c:\Program Files.

3. I tried running as an administrator with similar results.

4. So I then tried installing to an my apps folder which is outside of the Windows program folders. The install completed, except it said it could not access the attachment folder in my windows user's area C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Pandora and that I could change it.

5. So I changed the location of the attachments folder to the folder containing the program (which again is outside of the standard default windows program folders). I got no further error messages from Pandora.

6. It now appears that adding attachments works.

So there are some issue with file permissions. This is the first time I have run into this situation.
-ed

I'm glad we sorted that out for you!

Lots of other people run into such Windows permissions issues with all sorts of Windows apps. See for example these search hits: https://www.bing.com/search?&q=windows+permissions+issues

Would you believe it? Soon after mentioning that I was not having this issue, it started happening to me too!

It's apparent;y all to do with Windows permissions, which Microsoft must have changed recently (since this issue with Pandora has on;y arisen recently).

Brna has come up with a solution-- or more accurately a bypass-- im Pandora version 5.2 released four days ago. Referring to its release notes (with some rearranging/rewording and some additional comments of my own that are underlined):

Send-to Handler Tool
This tool serves as a proxy window [that opens on your Windows desktop] for file drag and drop operations (such as from File Explorer to Pandora, or from the Windows desktop, or other apps that implement a drag and drop interface), when direct drag and drop is not possible (due mismatched user-credentials in between Pandora and File Explorer). Allows quick moving and copying of the original files, and simplifies attaching files from multiple folders. (And optionally this preserves this files list across Pandora sessions, for easy re-send or just to keep track.

Graphical User Interface
Added:   Send-to Handler menu item: Tools/Send to Handler.
When started from this menu, Send-to Handler is invoked with lower (Standard) credentials, if Pandora is running with Admin credentials (so we can drag/drop files from File Explorer).

As a reminder, I'm unsure exactly why but it's normal/expected for Pandora to be run as Administrator. .. but I stand to be corrected on this.

Tony Austin wrote:
As a reminder, I'm unsure exactly why but it's normal/expected for Pandora to be run as Administrator. .. but I stand to be corrected on this.

Tony,

I use the System default location for the Pandora Application Folder which is C:\Program Files\Pandora\.

I use a custom location for the Pandora User Data Folder which is E:\Users\butch\Documents\Pandora\Mail\.

The Pandora Installer is run using Administrator privileges.  

The Pandora application runs with normal privileges.

Something must be different between our Pandora installations and/or option settings, and this difference requires you to run  the Pandora application using Administrator privileges.

Butch

G'day Butch.

Okay, I've recently been running Pandora.exe in administrator mode, and think this is because I saw a comment in release notes or a forum post saying that's what you should do. (I think, but am not sure, that it was Brana who made that suggestion, but just might have been somebody else.)

I went to the programs folder and changes the properties of Pandora.exe to "Run as administrator" for the above reason. I was one of the people having problems with pasting attachments via drag and drop directly into the message editr, as per the following forum post: https://pandoramail.forumotion.net/t282-adding-attachments-cause-send-to-fail-and-progrm-to-lock-up

Inspired by your response last night, I have now removed the  "Run as administrator" property, and Pandora so far seems to not be suffering from that. In addition, it''s again possible to drag and drop attachments so that issue goes away in non-administrator mode. which id goodness.

For me the question remains: ... Is there any good reason to run Pandora in administrator mode (and where you need Brana's "Send to Handler" tool to somewhat clumsily paste attachments)?

Hi Tony and Butch,

I had surmised that the problem with attachments had to do with permissions, but since I did not build the program I could not even begin to determine what or why. As the pandemic started I needed to build a little program that would attach and map of network drives on the corporate VPN to specific drive letters on our laptops. Unfortunately the commands to map/attach the drives ran at an elevate privilege, so the user acct which was running at normal privileges could not see any files on the network drive. I solved the problem but frankly do not remember exactly how I did it.

I think the reason I ran my installation in admin mode was when I started in non-admin mode the first time (and since then) this dialog popped up:

"Warning:
Pandora is running in non-Administrator mode. Some of the settings related to Windows integration will not be available during this session.
To start Pandora as an administrator..."

I checked out the send to tool in Admin mode and it does work fine.

I also am running in non-Admin mode and the drag and drop for attachments works great with no issues.
So I am a happy camper.
So the key is to run in normal (non-Admin) mode

Now, it would be nice to know what settings are affected by running non-admin vs admin.

-ed

Good that you resolved drives-access issue, pandora-ed. Mailbox file access error ('Mailbox Out can not be accessed at this time') points in that direction.

When running with non-admin credentials:
You can not register Pandora as default mailer, or feeds aggregator.
You do not have access to root certificates in Windows.
You can not lift certain quotas, such as GDI-objects quota.
You _can_ do (files) drag and drop.

Why files drag and drop is disabled in Windows when client application has admin credentials, but there is a mismatch (in credentials) with File Explorer I do not know.
Apps can exchange file-paths in number of other ways.
(If I'd have to guess, big customers requested it just to reduce sheer number of files copied back and forth, relentlessly, as drag and drop is a preferred method.)