Attachments in Mail Downloads folder

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Level 1

32 points

Attachments in Mail Downloads folder

I found a folder Home>Library>Mail Downloads which was loaded with about every attachment I have ever received using Mail. I was trying to figure out why. In Mail prefs, there is an option to select a folder, I have chosen Home>Downloads pretty much which is also default for my browser. The action is set to remove unedited copies when message is deleted. I'm confused because it looks like the Destination and Action are independent. When I have an attachment, if I click "Save" it populates the selected path to the "Downloads" folder. If I open that attachment, it seems to populate the Home>Library>Mail folder.

What controls the opened attachments form populating this, somewhat, obscure folder?

MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jan 28, 2009 3:31 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 28, 2009 3:52 PM in response to razzman

Hi,

Attachments to messages are actually stored in the mailbox along with the message text. It is when an attachment must be opened with another application, such as a Word document with Word, that the attachment is also placed in the Mail Downloads folder. There it can be used and edited by the application used to open it, and from there can be returned as edited to the sender or to others.

There is no reason files must permanently stay, but if you edit or otherwise alter files that have been attached, then you must elect some place to keep them for your own use.

You will note that in the Mail Preferences/General there is also a selection regarding when to remove files from Downloads folder if not edited. Any file that is not edited need not remain in the Downloads folder since it already exists in the mailbox with the message it came attached to.

Image files, since they can be opened directly in the Mail window, by Mail, do not go into the Downloads folder, but if any were opened from the message, with say, Photoshop, then that image file would also be sent to the Downloads, temporarily.

Ernie

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Answer 2

razzman Author

Level 1

32 points

Jan 29, 2009 10:26 AM in response to Ernie Stamper

Thanks. Your detail helped. What Mail doesn't tell you is the existence of the Mail Downloads folder. If you look at the Mail>Preferences>General panel, you can option which folder to save downloaded files, which can be any folder, then the next choice is the Action for unedited files. I would assume that this action would effect my choice of Download folder, but it doesn't

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Answer 3

Feb 20, 2009 11:16 AM in response to razzman

I wanted to add that I had this problem - mails long ago deleted had all the attachments in the 'Mail Downloads' folder.

My mail preference 'Remove unedited downloads' was set to 'After Message is Deleted', but the unedited attachments remained after the mails were deleted. I changed the setting to 'When Mail Quits' which worked.

I pickup mail from another account via IMAP. I guess this makes the setting behave differently.

Thanks for the pointers to solve my problem.

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