Mail was unable to save the attachment

As a test, I used another User Account on my Snow Leopard boot volume to set up one Hotmail account. Prior to setting up the one account there were neither a Mail folder, nor a Mail Downloads folder. After setup of the account, there was of course a Mail folder at Home/Library/Mail, but no Mail Downloads. After receiving a message with two JPEG images, and then using Quick View, there was a Mail Downloads folder. Mail Preferences/General initially had merely Downloads selected, and remained so after the Mail Downloads was created. But I would be able to now select Mail Downloads.

Ernie

Same problem here, though it just started today and I've been running Snow Leopard for a week.

PDFs are fine, but Word and other documents can't be opened and viewed in Compose. And Mail refuses to send anything with any attachment. That, to put it mildly, is not helpful.

I'm experiencing a host of other Mail-related snafus, all of which seem tied to Snow Leopard. I was expecting a few problems with MS Word (and indeed it has crashed on me), but not with Mail.

My productivity has taken a dive over the past seven days. Please fix this soon!

If you use Quick View or another third party app to open, say, a JPEG, then the Mail Downloads folder will be created, and then via the Other path, you can select. However, I cannot say if that will assist or not.

Please give me a simple test I can perform in my test User Account to best match what you find problematic. Then if not all types of attachments are problematic, tell about the ones that work?

Ernie

SInce upgrading to Snow Leopard from Leopard if I am sent a .doc file I cannot open it or download it from the Mail app, but if I am sent a .docx file, there is no problem with opening/downloading it. I suspect it is an incompatibility between OS 10.6.0 and 10.6.1 and Office 2008 for Mac. The problem may lie somewhere in Mac-rosoft land... I'm hoping someone at either Apple or MS will take ownership of this problem so we can see a resolution soon.

I'm having the same issue. The problem just popped up about a week ago long after I installed Snow Leopard.

The attachment seems to go out fine and my recipients have no problem opening it, however, when I try to open the Word file from my email as I compose it, I get the message:

"Mail was unable to save the attachment. Verify that your downloads folder exists and is writable."

I just updated Word 2008 and it doesn't fix the problem.

Really annoying

I just re-installed Mac OS X Snow Leopard from scratch (removing all data), and the problem still persists. Funny thing is that before I restored MS Office, I tried to open a word document (normally it would be opened using Pages), but even Pages did not recognise that particular file.... So it seems that both MS Word and Pages can't read some doc files for some reason.

I then installed Office, performed two critical updates suggested (one straight after the other), and the attachment issue still remains.

At least the screen flickering that I was experiencing on my Late 08 MBP seems to be gone (but I've only been using the machine for a couple of hours, so I'm not counting victory yet).

Just noticed the "viewing attachment in compose" problem that others reported and was playing around and found some interesting behavior. I quit mail and renamed my mail downloads folder and then created an empty mail downloads folder. Then reselected the new folder as my downloads folder in preferences. Sent some test emails with attachments but when the mail arrived (with attachments) no attachments in the mail downloads folder. Attachments are viewable in the email. Attachments are no longer being saved to the downloads folder despite having a preference for where to save them. They are being saved to user/library/mail/[mail acct: e.g., POP-username@domain.com]/INBOX.mbox/Attachments.

I also attached a powerpoint document and a Word document to the same email. Clicking on the Powerpoint file opens the powerpoint file. Clicking on the Word doc, gets the error message.

If I had to speculate ... Attachment handling has changed in the new version of Mail, but needed changes have not been made for attachment handling during the compose process. The old process was to copy a document into a downloads folder when you attach it in compose. Clicking on the attachment sent the file location to the appropriate app. The new process appears to not create a copy of the attachment while in compose. Double clicking on the attachment seems to have been changed to pass on the correct pathway for some document types (e.g., powerpoint) but not others (e.g., word).

I also noticed that if I open a sent document, that double-clicking on the attachment opens it up and that if I do a "send again" the document will open up from within the compose window (maybe because a copy of the document is actually saved somewhere on sending and when doing a send again, the file locations align.

Hope this gets fixed soon. I agree with others that Mail has seemed to be buggy since snow leopard. I've had to rebuild mailboxes a few times already.

Dan

Attachments have never been saved to the designated Downloads folder, unless you needed to use another application to open them. Image files that merely View in Place have never needed to be saved to the Downloads folder, but Word docs, etc that needed another app to open have been. Using the Quick View button also results in saving to the Downloads folder.

But the Downloads folder copy is a redundant copy to what has always been saved with the message. It was added to Mail to provide a temporary storage location for files that might immediately be edited and sent back to the original sender without having to save them more permanently. That is why the Mail Preferences/General has the selection for when to remove from the Downloads folder -- that selection does not impact the copy saved with the message.

In these regards, attachment handling has not been changed in Mail 4.x from that in Mail 3.x and Leopard. New in Mail 4.x is an Attachment folder in the INBOX.mbox folder of POP accounts, but this again is redundant to the copy saved with the message in the Messages folder. In Mail 3.x, the Attachment folder was added for INBOX.imapmbox folders, but not POP mailboxes, until now in Mail 4.x. There does not need to be a general User awareness of this new Attachments folder, as its use is not normally visible.

Ernie

Since upgrading to 10.6.1 about 10 days ago, the Save button in my Mail message no longer does anything at all when I click it. To save attachments, I have to double click on them in the message and then use Save As to get them on my hard drive.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Are there any suggestions for fixes?

Hello, and welcome to the Discussions.

If you roll the cursor over the Save button, without clicking, does any function description appear in a yellow box?

If you click an hold briefly, what happens?

Are you reporting that it worked in 10.6, or an earlier version of the OSX?

Ernie

Think it's a MIME issue ... this worked for us:

Change the message type from rich text to plain text in Mail Preferences.

Cannot remember which tab at the top it's under but I'm sure you'll find it 🙂

I'm having a similar problem - mail claims it is unable to save attachments to disk. BUT this doesn't apply to all attachments, nor does it apply to all attachments of the same type. In one case, I have one inbound email in my inbox with a .pdf attachment that generates the error, and another with a .pdf attachment that does not generate the error.

CONCLUSION: The error message about permissions is misleading. I'm sure there's an error, but whatever it is, it's not permissions.

Other potential clues: I can read the problem email - and the .pdf attachment - on my iPod Touch. If I forward the email to myself (from the Touch) including the attachment, the forwarded copy has the same problem. The problem occurs for email delivered via POP and also via IMAP. If I log into my POP email account via my ISP's web mail interface and download the attachment it is displayable. If I forward the downloaded attachment to myself via POP mail the delivered email does not have the problem.

BTW: I did repair permissions, but it didn't change any behavior

Just got a MacBook Pro and am having the same trouble. Some of the suggestions on this thread are, I'm afraid, rather beyond me so I hope for a Solution For Dummies at some point. I have noticed that if I save a message with unopenable outgoing attachment in drafts, THEN open it, it seems to work. I look forward to an answer.

I have found a fix for this problem on my system. I save the composed message with attachment as a draft. Close the message and browse to my "Drafts" folder in mail. Reopen the message and now I can open the .doc attachment with not problems.

This is a permissions issue for the user folder. I resolved it by browsing to the /Users folder and control + clicking (or right clicking) on the User folder (The house) and clicking "get info" on it. Then under sharing and permissions click on the padlock at the bottom right to open it and enter in your user password to unlock it. The permissions should be YourName (me) read & write, Wheel or Staff read only and Everyone Read only. Then click on the gear at the bottom and click Apply to enclosed items. Click on OK to apply to enclosed items and wait for it to finish. Restart and you should be good to go. Hope this helps