Attachments to emails

When I receive email on my Fairphone 2 with attachments, the attachments won’t open. I receive text, pictures, links etc, but I can none of them. I get a screen message which says there is no app to open the attachments. What can I do? Help!

What kind of files are they?
Media files should be no problem, but for documents you need to install an app that can read that file type.

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For .pdf files I can recommend MuPDF, and for any Office files “LibreOffice Viewer (v 5.3.0.0)” does an acceptable job.

They hardly ask for permissions.

Most attachments are texts from a variety of sources, plus documents, photographs etc. My FP2 doesn’t open any attachment of any kind. I usually have to transfer them to my computer to open them. It may be that FP2 doesn’t have an automatic app that opens attachments, and if it doesn’t, then that is a design fault; or it may be that I haven’t altered the relevant settings on my phone. As a technology ignoramus, I’m always challenged by new technology! Any help would be helpful an appreciated.

PJA13

I have no idea how Fairphone OS handles this by default, never used it.

I would think there would be some generic document viewer installed, and the first time I open an attachment Android would request whether I want to open the attachment with the viewer only this time or always, and that would be it.

If this initial process somehow failed, perhaps you could try whether installing this App here gets the system back to asking you what to do with an attachment …

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.sufficientlysecure.viewer

These days someone could put it into this light. But I would say it has its cause in the past as several proprietary meanwhile common file types were developed and were continuously spread widely.
Files like .doc/docx (M$-Office writer file) /.xls (M$-Office Excel Spreadsheet) are used daily but M$ wanted users to own their office suit to handle/read/write such file types. There have been good 3rd party developments in the past such as Open-/Libreoffice to read/handle and also write these files. But those so called file filters had to be developed from scratch for not to use any M$ protected code.
This is a great achievement to now have non-M$ tools to read such proprietary files already. Writing them as well is a huge benefit, but does not assure 100% compatibility with originally saved files from M$-Office tools.
Looking at availabilities on new operation systems as Android there are apps being able to read M$ office files but it is most sure not having the option to save them in their original format. M$ does offer their office tools in the app store though. As I never have tested them I don’t know how the functionality is.

For FP2 not keeping a default app for opening such files it is rather a secure way not to run into any copyright troubles. Hence it is up to the user if needed to get him a proper app.
But I think a pdf viewer should be preinstalled as reading such files always has been for free.

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