Mail was unable to save the attachment

Unfortunately for me, I found my User folder permissions already set as you mentioned in your post, so this isn't the source of the problem - at least not for some of us.

It's the same thing for me, as with others - can't open .doc attachments while in Compose.

It's surely not the end of the world, but for an OS manufacturer that bases its marketing campaign on the ease of use of its systems, I think this is something Apple should be addressing a little more proactively...

I'm having this problem:

composing a message in Mail, I attach a .doc file and if I clicked on that I cannot open it and I got the Error message like you said: "Mail was unable to save the attachment “name of file.doc” to disk. Verify that your downloads folder exists and is writable."

I already tried to go to /User/Downloads and change in Sharing and Permissions Everybody to "Read and Write" then click "Apply", then reopen Mail and do the same thing, but nothing changed.

The weird thing is that this happens just with .doc files.

I'm wondering if eventually who is receiving my email with the attached .doc file will actually be able to open the file.

Please fix this issue.

Thanks

Also broken for me on new MBA. Office has all the latest updates and perm's on User folder are as suggested by previous poster... will gladly return this and buy my wife a Netbook running XP if random usability problems that require me to dig through forums are going to be the norm. 😉

I agree that the problem seems confined to .doc documents. Word files with the .docx extension work fine.

Notwithstanding the problems we have with viewing them as an attachment while composing, they do transmit just fine. And you should be able to read them once the messages are sent by clicking on the document from your Sent folder.

An annoying problem to be sure, and one that must be fixed, but not the kind that brings productivity to a screeching halt.

my new iMac was doing the unable to save the attachment nonsense like everybody elses. I was re-checking all my settings...and while poking around the system prefs, I had selected file sharing, so de-selected it...and could then save attachments. Even weirder...went back and selected it again...and could STILL save attachments. Weird, baby, weird! Maybe this quirkiness will help someone...cheers....rd

Mine seems fixed as well... but will only count victory after a few days' use! And my flickering seems fixed as well !!!!!!!! Again, it's only been an hour since installation! But I'm soooooooo happy already!

I just talked to one of our sales reps, who has been having some issues with 10.6 (I have used it without problems for a month). He got the same error- "Mail was unable to save the attachment" when receiving PDFs from one of our artists. I had him forward the messages to me, and I noticed that the PDFs had somehow corrupted- for each PDF, there was a corresponding metadata file with html coding in it, and I could not open the PDF. I had her forward the same attachment to me, and I received them without trouble. No idea what to do!

This is an exact description of the problem I am experiencing - but so far it has only happened with one attachment, from one client, sending an MS Word doc from a PC via Thunderbird. My business partner (also on 10.6.2)had the same problem with the same message.

I'm having the same issue with a .jpg file. I have a very simple workaround but it only works if you have a .me account.

1. Login to Mobil Me.
2. Select the Email.
3. Click the link on the attachment.

It should download into your downloads folder on your mac. I'm not sure what caused the error. I believe that it has to do with the client's email composition software. Hope this helps.

jk

I applied permissions to my entire user folder by getting info unlocking making sure my user had read write privileges and then clicking the little cog wheel and applied permissions to all sub folders. Works now for me. It didn't do anything when I did that to just my downloads folder so maybe that might work to by doing it to just your User Library folder too. Probably something wrong in where it is saving things.

This also fixed the problem when opening several .jpgs from preview and dragging them from the drawer to the desktop the picture wasn't showing up and now it does. Don't know how that got messed up.

I'm experiencing this problem as well. Incoming attachments can not be opened with the "verify the disk is writeable" error. It has happened so far with .zip and .rtf files, and I don't have Microsoft Office installed on the system, so that's not related. Here's what I've done try and fix it so far:

* Repaired permissions
* Repaired User permissions (from the DVD)
* Quit and re-opened Mail
* Verified that the permissions were correct through the Terminal

I tried forwarding the email to a non MobileMe account and it went through as a zero byte file, which I suppose makes sense since it didn't download it in the first place. Console doesn't show anything.

I have noticed a correlation to when .doc files (and presumably others as well) are downloaded and can be opened verses when they can not. It seems in both cases the files are downloaded, but the attachment headers are slightly different. (To view these headers click from the menubar "View>Message>Raw Source" while the problem email is highlighted).

The ones that work have 'Content-Type: application/msword' in their headers, whereas the ones that don't work have 'Content-Type: application/applefile;'. This is consistent with all occurrences I have checked. Of course I have no idea why some .doc files are labeled with applefile and some are labeled with msword, but somehow I think this is the problem. There are other differences in the headers at times, but this is the only difference that is correlated with the attachment being "unavailable".

Examples:
---------------------------------------------------------
DOESN'T WORK:
---------------------------------------------------------
Content-Type: application/applefile;
name=" attachment_name.doc"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename=" attachment_name.doc"


---------------------------------------------------------
WORKS:
---------------------------------------------------------
Content-Type: application/msword;
name=" attachment_name.doc"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename=" attachment_name.doc"

Upon further investigation, it appears that this may be related to issues caused by others. Here is a link to a discussion with some information. I believe in the past Mail.app was more "forgiving" perhaps and was able to determine the mime-type using the content, regardless something has changed. I am seeing these bad files more and more often. Ultimately it has something to do with Mail.app because if I use gmail via the online interface it works perfectly fine.

Even more looking gave me another "symptom" that is very likely rooted in the same problem. I have found that looking through previously downloaded messages I can find files that in previous versions of mail opened fine, but in the current version give the same error as the new message attachments (i.e. "Mail was unable to save the attachment “attachment.doc” to disk. Verify that your downloads folder exists and is writable.")

This is, of course, garbage, as I can find the message that is saved locally on my hard drive and see the files--they just will not open. I think this is a fairly good indication that apple's definitions concerning MIME types has changed in some way, otherwise these old files would/should work fine. Alternatively, Apple has altered the way attachments are saved, and unless they have been saved into the mail attachments folder rather than inline with the message, the attachments are not accessible.

So it isn't that the files are not being downloaded. I think it is because OSX can no longer appropriately navigate the MIME types as it did before or the save location has changed and mail can not navigate that change correctly.

For me I found a permissions problem. Once I fixed it the permissions I no longer get the error... For starters close MAIL, it shouldn't be running when you do this. No harm will come if you don't, but just to be sure I suggest closing everything down.

1) Open Finder
2) /home_dir/Library/
3) Highlight the Mail and Mail Download folders
4) Right mouse click and select "Get Info"

5)... read below
I noticed in the Mail downloads folder I had the following accounts assigned under "Sharing & Permissions". Take notice to the user accounts listed... Note MY SID of jnorris is not there! I have:

_unknown : Read & Write
staff : Read Only,
everyone : Read Only



I removed the _unknown and added my SID: jnorris and applied the Read & Write permissions.



You may have to add just your user account if it's missing, but you'll also have to apply the permissions and "make user account the owner". Also apply all changes to enclosed items. If your users account is there I suggest changing the everyone permissions to "NO ACCESS", and apply those changes to the enclosed items.

I hope this helps some, it did me and I'm not able to save my images and documents. Yippie!

-Jay

Message was edited by: JayNorris

Message was edited by: JayNorris