Mail was unable to save the attachment

Jeff,

This sounds slightly like another report, but in that report, which I have tested and reproduced, the issue was with trying to open an attachment that had been attached in the Compose window, while still composing. The error message is the same, but not the exact same problem.

When you see a file named image.jpg, it is often an unintended attachment produced during a forward from an embedded, remote image. If you will click on my name to the left, and email me at the address that will be seen in the bio line of the resulting Profile, I will send you a test email with an attached JPEG that is sure to be a normal attachment.

Ernie

Is this after asking Mail to Save anything, or when Mail is trying to View in Place, say, with a JPEG?

Try creating a New Mailbox, to be On My Mac, and then copy one of these messages to that mailbox. Can you then open the attachments?

Ernie

Message was edited by: Ernie Stamper

Ernie:

I get the same message for text and Word documents added to the Compose window. But movie docs, .mov and .m4v, PDFs, Pages and .rtf files will open.

Some jpg files will open and others will not. The same goes for mp3s. All other image files, psd, tif and gifs, give the same error message.

As Yul Brenner so aptly put it: 'Tis a puzzlement.

OT,

Thanks!

As you may have seen, I have filed a bug report for the issue with the Compose window. However, this seem different, since it does not involve Composing. But seems likely to be related.

Ernie

OT,

Thanks -- your post gave me a good opportunity to mention that I had filed a possibly related bug report.

Really curious that it is not the same for all file types -- but what that means is puzzling!

Ernie

Message was edited by: Ernie Stamper

Jeff,

Do the following and test again, please. In your User folder, control-click, and use Get Info on the Downloads folder, and then if the Sharing and Permissions for Everyone is set to No Access change to Read Only. Let me know if anything changes?

Ernie

I am having the same problem. Just installed Snow Leopard. When I compose an email and try to attach a word doc to the email, I get "Mail was unable to save attachment to disk. Verify that your downloads folder exists and is writable." I've done nothing different to that folder! And, it is set as "read only".

Don

Have you guys tried installing this shareware: http://lokiware.info/Mail-Attachments-Iconizer. It worked me on leopard with all attachments. And now I'm hoping with the updated version for Snow Leopard (coming soon) it will work again.
kathy

I also have the same problem with attachments. Error message...Mail was unable to save the attachments. Verify that your downloads folder exists and is writable. My have changed the settings in the download folder but still get the same message.

It seems that if I create a document completely from the start (e.g. word) it will attach OK, but if any part of my document has been downloaded and is then incorporated into a new document that I try to send (even if I copy and paste downloaded text into a new document) then the "Mail was unable to save the attachment.....' occurs. Suggestions?

Thanks

Mike

I have had the same problem since the upgrade to Snow Leopard last week. One extra strange thing is - my Word doc in this case is 41KB on my hard drive. I attach it to my mail in the compose window, and it is then 34KB when I get the same error: 'Mail was unable to save the attachment to disk. Verify that your downloads folder exists and is writable.'

When I tested sending the same word document to myself I could open it without a problem. It had the reduced file size within the body of the message (34KB) when it arrived in my inbox in mail, but when I saved the word document it to disk, it was the 41KB of the original.

Ant

I am experiencing the same issue when I hit the attach button or when I drag the document into the message body.

I have tried several different file types of different sizes. This particular issue seems to be related to attaching word documents. If I attach .jpeg, .mp3, .zip... any other file format, it works. I have a feeling someone tried to write in functionality to handle word documents and it's causing the error. It may have to do with writing the file to a temp directory before attempting to send the email. I have a feeling one of the temp directories has the wrong permissions so it spits back a misleading error message.

I am also experiencing the same. Can't attach .doc files since upgrading to Snow Leopard. Same error message. I have no problem with attaching pdf and jpg files, only .doc. And only some .doc, others are fine. My (temporary) solution is to save the files I want to send as pdf and then I have no problem. Hope someone can find an answer to this soon, as it is very annoying.