Missing attachment "paper clip" icon and "Remove Attachment" command in Mac Mail (still unresolved)

This was asked many times and never resolved. The problem has been reported already in Sierra (2016) (and maybe earlier) and still persists today (Big Sur) (2021) !

Very often, in sent or received e-mails with attachments, the paper clip icon is not shown.

When this happens, also the menu command "Remove Attachments" is dimmed (unavailable).

It is only possible to delete the entire e-mail, not just the attachment.

This is a big problem for me, because I need to keep track of all the e-mails (cannot delete them), but in order to preserve space on my hard drive, I usually remove large or unnecessary attachments.

Over the years, I have found some workarounds, such as selecting multiple e-mail messages, of which at least one - hopefully - has the paper clip icon. This will make the "Remove Attachment" command available and I can delete the attachments in all selected messages, including those where the paper clip is not showing.

When there is no message with a paper clip to select, what sometimes works is that I forward an e-mail with an attachment (but no paper clip icon) to myself. With some luck, in the duplicate message the paper clip appears. So that I can apply the workaround described above.

The problem has been reported many times. Just a few examples:

here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7325302

and here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7729492

and here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252033935

and here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251663017

and here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252456339

and .... (many other places)

And you can be sure that in none of above discussions there is a real solution for it !!

I am just wondering if Apple is reading?

As suggested elsewhere, I have submitted countless product feedbacks to the developers of Apple Mail over the years with the frustrating feeling that nobody listens and cares.

They are more concentrated in implementing new sexy features (certainly not in Mail) and professionals who rely on mail for their daily work are left out in the dark.

I have spent hours with the technical support on the telephone and was treated like a fool (the lady told me that the problem did not exist and wanted to hang up).

I took my MacBook Pro to an Apple Store and showed the problem to a Genius: he acknowledged

that this is a real problem! He searched through the database and found many reports regarding the same problem. He promised to escalate the problem.

Now, many years later, here we are. The problem still exists. I am so desperate and frustrated.

For those interested in some technical detail:

I have MacOS Big Sur (clean install) running on a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro, my e-mail account uses IMAP (other users have reported the same problem with POP3 however, see links provided above). I experience the problem with both incoming and outgoing messages (more frequently with the latter ones), particularly with rather small attachments (e.g. a 1-page pdf). And yes, I have selected "download all attachments" in the Mail Preferences on all my e-mail accounts.

In my opinion, Mail fails to synchronize the attachment information with the mail server. Depending on the software and platform used by the e-mail provider (Exchange, others...) the problem can be more or less frequent.

Is there anyone there at Apple who is listening? Pleaseeeeeee!!!!!