Remove attachments in Mail

Hi Adam

'Save as' doesn't work for me either, but your tip works!

I wonder, do you also experience the following (less irritating) bug: removing attachments from received mail causes the mail itself also to disappear. After selecting another postbox and then reselecting received mail the message reappears (correctly without attachment). Maybe these problems are related.

I get the disappearing problem as well, quite often, but not always. It's kind of unpredictable. You might find itm "less irritating", but I find it pretty serious myself. If you don't know that selecting another box and then the inbox again makes it reappear, you can find yourself looking at a list from which your message has disappeared altogether.

This crap is getting really tiring.

I finally have found two workarounds that work for me.

I assume that you have the same setup as me:

- IMAP Accounts

- Attachments from SENT mails cannot be removed

Workaround #1

- Go to another computer. I could successully remove all attachments from the sent folder on my laptop (that I sent from my desktop) and vice versa: If I sent the message from the laptop, I could remove the attachment from the sent folder on my desktop.

Workaround #2

- Move the offending message from one IMAP account to another one. As soon as the "new" mail has been downloaded into Mail, the remove attachment menu item is enabled.

- It is crucial that it's another IMAP account and not only another folder within the same IMAP account. If you move it within a folder only, it may work or may not.

I think this is an issue if the mail does not leave the computer. As soon as the mail is processed in some way (e.g. on a mailserver), the issue disappears.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Michael

Funny. #2 works for me too. Even with a POP3 account. I just move the message to another account(IMAP), then back to the original one (POP3) - just to keep things where they belong (you do not have to do it to remove attachments) and voila - I can remove attachments.

Meanwhile Apple found a decent solution to this, I use a practical solution. Everytime you will send a message containing a big attachment, include your email direction in the blind copy line. Then you will recieve a copy of your mail in the inbox and there will be posible to delete attachments. Then you can delete the mail in the sentbox and archive the copy received.

It´s work but the problem is how to remenber this all the time. There are some rule o function to make this automatically?

Regards to all of you.

Jamie123: Thank you for the Lifehacker.com tip you posted. This worked for me. I've recently added an Exchange account to my Apple Mail and I wasn't able to remove attachments until I created the Mail Smart Folder you detailed. (Running Mountain Lion, Mail Ver 6.2 (1499).

Recently discovered the BCC trick does not do the job: indeed it is possible to remove the paperclip in the incoming mail but the size of the mail does not get smaller!

Better solutions for the problem are offered above.

hi,

im having the same issues, have tried these options and thought it had worked but for some reason my mail has created a RECOVERED messages mailbox and keeps the email as new then makes duplicates?????

any help in this would be great

thanks

Mat

What's working for me in a somewhat exceptable form is, sent - highlite mesg - hit reply to all - new copy will appear minus the attachment - type in title of attachment - hit red delete dot - save (will go to drafts) - delete original in sent folder.

It seems that the solution (#2) to move the message between mailboxes is a bit stochastic. Sometimes it's sufficient to move the message from my ordinary IMAP sent box to my iCloud sent box, but sometimes I have to keep moving the message around for a while to make the "Remove attachments" option become selectable, between different IMAP boxes and local boxes. Sometimes it's enough to wait for a while without moving the message around. I can't really see the general rule here. Very strange. Apple, wake up.

OK, There is an update available today: this update addresses the sent mail issues: you can delete attachments from sent mail, the same way you would do for mails in inbox. Thanks Apple!!!

This update is part of the iTunes, iBooks & Mail as a package.

The upgrade was a mixed bag for me, as far as being able to remove attachments from "Sent" messages. I found that quite a few of my Sent messages with attachments suddenly showed up with the Paper Clip in the Attachment column, and those I could select and choose "Remove Attachments." But other Sent messages, especially older messages, even those with multiple attachments, did not display the Paper Clip and for those messages, the menu option "Remove Attachments" was greyed out and I could not remove those attachments. I don't know why some messages could be separated from their attachments and others have some sort of attachment disorder, but it seems like maybe from here on, the problem may be solved.

This "feature" (Remove Attachment) has been essentially disabled (grey) since I installed Mavericks and that includes the recent Mail update. This inability is not only for emails that I sent but for the many(!) emails that I receive that have attachments. I get my email fromn a university server running Exchange. This is not a gmail problem.

I'm still experiencing the problem now and then. Today I discovered something interesting.

I have two messages lying around in my Sent box, since their attachments cannot be removed. I just got an answer to one of them, and suddenly I could remove the attachment from the original sent message. The other message, still unanswered, cannot be relieved from its attachment. There seems to be some connection here - or was it just coincidence?

I know this is a user forum, but if Apple means anything with their usability image, someone should monitor this conversation (and others) for input to problem solving and product enhancement. Hey, Apple?

And the same thing just happened with the other message. I got a reply to that, too. When I, in turn, had sent my reply (so that there were two messages in a thread in my Sent box), I was free to remove the attachment from the original message.

So, one way to be sure (?) would be to send BCC to yourself, and then reply to that incoming message. That would probably "unlock" the Remove Attachments command. I'll try that the next time and see what happens.