Big Sur Mail Attachment Paperclip Icon Missing

I had the missing paperclip issue when I first installed Big Sur (on release). I turned off 'Column View' under the View dropdown and then turned it back on - myriad paperclips (in their own column) ever since. I have not experienced any download queues.

I landed here because I had the same problem, or that's what I thought. When I saw the comment about the flag icon also missing, I selected a message and toggled a flag on and off. I first I completely missed it, but the flag icon WAS there, only in a different spot--under the date--and nearly invisible in dark mode. I then looked at the same spot in other messages in the column, and saw the paperclip icons but so small and faint that I had missed them before that. Not sure why the flag and paperclip icons were moved and shrunk and dimmed, but they are there (iMac, Big Sur, dark mode, Mail 14.0, default view).

You get a gold star.

Right click on the headings and there it is.

Thank you very much and have a great Christmas.

Tony

I just discovered if you bring up the contextual menu, there you can select what column headings you wish to appear. You have to have your mouse pointer in the column header area in order for the contextual menu to appearl

Well, what do you know. As I look through several of my emails, I am having ta similar issue and hadn't noticed. Some are showing up in the paper clip column as attachments and from what I can tell, they are not appearing if the sender is using Windows. I have one client who is a Mac user and his attachments appear in the paperclip column. Others—who I know are using Windows—are not showing up.

Have you tried sending an email with an attachment to yourself to see if that shows up? I could be wrong on my theory . . .

I have the same problem, and adding the attachments column in context layout does not help. I also have a pop account. The system doesn't seem to recognize the existence of attachments--with one exception: if I send an attachment, the paperclip icon shows up on my sent message. This is not the case for any messages I've received with attachments. Something isn't "reading" their existence. When I reported the problem, apple support suggested making a dummy user and reloading email there to see if it was any different (it's not). The second suggestion was to boot in safe mode and see if I could see the paperclip there; I haven't tried that yet. It sounds to me like an iOS issue (I have Big Sur 11.2) and there should be a fix for it.

Me too. It's a pain in the arse.

It only happens with 'Use Column Layout", which just happens to be the most useful view.

I have reported the bug to apple. I suggest we all do.

Tony

Frustrating! I just did something which helps in the meantime. I added "size" to the column headings so I can at spot which emails likely have attachments.

I tried different settings hoping to duplicate your issue and was unsuccessful. Could you provide your settings, maybe a screenshot (of the header paper clip icon and a couple of the emails that you know have attachments, but aren't indicating attachments). Maybe if we can "see" what you are looking at someone will figure it out.

Another experiment: All my email accounts are POP3. I created an IMAP version for one. Sent an email to that IMAP account with attachment, and the paperclip icon did show up in the attachments column, so evidently this is an issue with POP3 email.

By chance are your email accounts POP3 also?

Yes, it's a bug. I can see the paperclip when I open an email, in the upper right. It's tiny, nearly invisible. That's the only place it shows up. If the email is flagged, it's next to the flag when I open it, but not on the email list page, even though the flag is visible.

(This is a different complaint, but the flags appearing tiny and on the far right, vs larger and on the far left, are nearly useless.)

I”m pretty much out of ideas sorry. Could a corrupted install? Might be worth reinstalling the OS?

I'm running macOS Catalina 10.15.7 (latest version) and I cannot get the attachment icon to appear. When I right click the columns heading, the only option available is to sort by a different factor such as date, attachment, To, From, etc. But I cannot find a way to include a column showing the attachment icon.

Not only does my mail program not show the attachments icon, I have lost the display of the column headings. Here are pics of my junk folder showing the Sort by options in the drop down menu. And I also have a picture of the menu under Mail > View. Anyone else have these same settings?