Screaming.Pict
Level 1 (1 points)

Q: Mail.app- 'Remove Attachments' corrupting mails

I have a weird issue that I've not seen mentioned anywhere. Wondering if anyone can give me any debugging tips.

 

I'm using Mail 5.0 in Lion 10.6.1 (issue was occurring in 10.6.0 as well).

 

I have Mail connected to Exchange Server 2010.

 

I have a fairly tight restriction on mailbox sizes so I have to remove attachments from emails before I file them.

 

My problem is this; about 1 in 3 times I remove an attachment the 'replacement' e-mail is full of gibberish characters.

 

Typically if I look at the raw source of the e-mail then the text version of the mail is retained correctly- it seems to be the Base64 encoded version that is corrupted.

 

Any idea what I can do to debug this? I have tried removing the envelope files and removing/adding the account back in and re-syncing it but the issue has reappeared.

 

I've reported this to Apple on http://bugreports.apple.com but have not had a response.

 

Thanks in advance.

Unibody MacBook Pro 15" 2.8GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Aug 22, 2011 7:48 AM

by Rich In Space,Solvedanswer
Rich In Space Rich In Space
Level 1 (30 points)
A:

New insight:  I see now what Apple does wrong in its "Remove Attachments" command.

 

When they find a base64-encoded text/html portion in the original message they – for some reason – decide to decode it first. Then, after removing the attachment from the source, they write the decoded text version into the new message but leave the encoding headers intact, ie "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64".

 

I verified this by comparing original messages with those created after attachment removals that went berzerk. I haven't been able to verify if this is true for all base64 text/html messages with attachments however. Has any found any deviations from this?

 

Suggested solution (to Apple): Stop decoding any base64 parts of the original message. Just leave them as they are, and write them back into the new message with their original headers.

Posted on Feb 9, 2015 7:21 AM

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Screaming.Pict

Q: Mail.app- 'Remove Attachments' corrupting mails

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  • by slackerbot,

    slackerbot slackerbot Apr 10, 2015 11:26 AM in response to Rich In Space
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 10, 2015 11:26 AM in response to Rich In Space

    Been following this thread for years. Numerous manual fixes have not worked as I often have complex nested threads with attachments.

     

    But unbelievably, this script has worked on some troublesome emails.

     

    HUGE THANKS. HUGE KARMA.

     

    If it needs to be said, if a user can write an script to fix this, then Apple can certainly fix it in Mail.

     

    And Apple should be paying you for your work.

  • by Rich In Space,Helpful

    Rich In Space Rich In Space Apr 10, 2015 4:12 PM in response to slackerbot
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Apr 10, 2015 4:12 PM in response to slackerbot

    Thank you slackerbot. Your words are money to me.

     

    BTW, I'm leaving a version of the script here as well (updated w some extra fail-safes):

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7Gv-iaTLONqLVVzaS1pTVIycm8&authuser=0

  • by Anastasis Andronidis,

    Anastasis Andronidis Anastasis Andronidis May 5, 2015 6:38 AM in response to Screaming.Pict
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPhone
    May 5, 2015 6:38 AM in response to Screaming.Pict

    I filed a bug report on Apple's Bug Reporter. I don't know if someone already done that, but I hope someone give us some attention.

  • by chitin,

    chitin chitin May 5, 2015 7:17 PM in response to Rich In Space
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 5, 2015 7:17 PM in response to Rich In Space

    Your script works perfectly, great thanks to Rich In Space!

  • by C Banks,

    C Banks C Banks May 14, 2015 8:13 AM in response to 750 H2C
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 14, 2015 8:13 AM in response to 750 H2C

    Thanks. This worked for me. Would be good to get a fix on the issue from Apple though.

  • by ecdltf,

    ecdltf ecdltf May 14, 2015 1:16 PM in response to Anastasis Andronidis
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 14, 2015 1:16 PM in response to Anastasis Andronidis

    Yesterday I filed a bug report too (20933434).

     

    As others already mentioned, it has become worse since some time (since Yosemite probably). 1 or 2 out of 5 mails get corrupted.

  • by 750 H2C,

    750 H2C 750 H2C Jun 8, 2015 6:15 AM in response to Screaming.Pict
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 8, 2015 6:15 AM in response to Screaming.Pict

    Hmm, strange. Today I noticed that my Mail is less keen on corrupting messages than before. During the day's work, I've removed attachments from a number of messages, from people whose messages normally induce the corruption problem, without any problems at all. I checked if Mail had been updated in the background in some way, but it doesn't seem so. Could it be some kind of cosmic convergence?

  • by Anastasis Andronidis,

    Anastasis Andronidis Anastasis Andronidis Jun 19, 2015 4:26 PM in response to Rich In Space
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPhone
    Jun 19, 2015 4:26 PM in response to Rich In Space

    Thank bro!!! That was epic! Just for the other people that have same problems with iCloud! I had the same situation in iCloud and I had to:

     

    1) run your script (didn't see my email being fixed)

    2) change to an other folder/inbox/wtvr and then return back the the problematic inbox (then I say my mail being fixed)

    3) I had to move my mail to a local folder

    4) move the mail back to iCloud

     

    If I don't do steps 3 and 4, the mail returns to the corrupted form

  • by hr101,

    hr101 hr101 Jul 14, 2015 3:41 AM in response to Rich In Space
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 14, 2015 3:41 AM in response to Rich In Space

    The public beta still has this encoding issue unfortunately and your really helpful script may need tweaking (or it might just be beta software issues) but understand if you'd only want to look at this for final release. Just a heads up in case. Have been a daily user of the script since you made it available so am much in debt for your time to date.

  • by Anastasis Andronidis,

    Anastasis Andronidis Anastasis Andronidis Jul 30, 2015 8:31 AM in response to hr101
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPhone
    Jul 30, 2015 8:31 AM in response to hr101

    Hello, the Third OS X El Capitan Public Beta has been released today. Can someone verify that the bug still exists there?

     

    Has anybody (as a beta tester) reported this bug?

  • by hr101,

    hr101 hr101 Jul 30, 2015 8:51 AM in response to Anastasis Andronidis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 30, 2015 8:51 AM in response to Anastasis Andronidis

    This release does appear to have resolved this finally. I'm in good shape to date at least with no corruptions since  

  • by Rich In Space,

    Rich In Space Rich In Space Jul 30, 2015 1:30 PM in response to hr101
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Jul 30, 2015 1:30 PM in response to hr101

    I will be happy to update the script if it turns out El Capitan doesn't fix the bug (and if the script needs updating of course) – just let me know. Will have to wait for the final release though since I'm not in the beta test program.

  • by Edward Tewkesbury,

    Edward Tewkesbury Edward Tewkesbury Aug 18, 2015 6:31 PM in response to Screaming.Pict
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 18, 2015 6:31 PM in response to Screaming.Pict

    Removing an attachment from an email message in Mail under 10.10.5 just turned the body of the message into gibberish, again. Same behavior as in prior iterations of the OS.

     

    The good news is that the fix still works (change the second occurrence of "base64" to "quoted-printable").

     

    Hey, Apple, as of 8 days ago, this sore has festered for 3 years now. Happy birthday.

  • by zoranpop,

    zoranpop zoranpop Aug 20, 2015 1:13 AM in response to Rich In Space
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 20, 2015 1:13 AM in response to Rich In Space

    I tried the following, just out of curiosity, with an email where deleting the attachment changed text to chinese:

     

    1. Searched for the email using Spotlight
    2. Opened the email (.emlx) file using a text editor (TextWrangler)
    3. Replaced "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64" with "Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable"
    4. Saved the file
    5. Switched to Mail where the email was now readable but the preview was still garbled.
    6. Rebuilt the mailbox
    7. Voila, back in business!

     

    My setup: Yosemite 10.10.5, Apple Mail 8.2

  • by Rich In Space,

    Rich In Space Rich In Space Aug 20, 2015 1:33 AM in response to zoranpop
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Aug 20, 2015 1:33 AM in response to zoranpop

    @zoranpop, this is what we've been doing all the time in this support thread. Please, read comments above.

     

    Also, I left an AppleScript letting you perform these steps easier, with a single click in the AS menu from within Mail (see link at April 10 above). It also adds some other valuable sanity checks. Feel free to use it (source code is open).

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