Mail not showing emails with attachments

It could be because you are using a pop email account and by its nature downloads emails to one device, the first device to download the email, and removes it from the email server at the time of download. As far as I know this normally does not happen with phones as they usually leave a copy on the email server so it can be downloaded again to a computer. But I have no working knowledge of how iphones and the built in mail program on the iphone work in this respect.

You should see if your email provider has imap access to their servers.

I'm not that familiar with the built in mail program as I use outlook but there might be a setting to not download emails that contain attachments. I would browse through the mail preferences and go through the menu items for a option/setting to not download emails with attachments. If I get the time I'll fire up apple mail and take a look but that might take me a while. Very busy today.

Myabe a google search for "option/preference to not download emails with attachments, apple/mac mail".

I suggest you try one of the other email programs available for os x. There are a few that are free and some at a fairly low cost. One reason I switched to outlook is because of the inconsistencies I found with the built in mail program and it was included in MS Office for Mac.

But I have some coworkers using thunderbird on both windows and mac os x and they like it. Most of them have outlook also but use thunderbird.

Quit Mail. Force quit if necessary.

Back up all data. That means you know you can restore the Mail database, no matter what happens.

Triple-click the text on the line below to select it:

~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope Index

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C). In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder

from the menu bar. Paste into the box that opens (command-V), then press return.

A Finder window will open with a file selected. Move the selected file to the Desktop, leaving the window open. Other files in the folder may have names that begin with "Envelope Index". Move those files, if any, to the Trash.

Log out and log back in. Relaunch Mail. It should prompt you to re-import your messages. You may get a warning that the index is corrupt and that Mail has to quit. Click OK.

Test. If Mail now works as expected, you can delete the file you moved to the Desktop. Otherwise, post your results.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:

ls -@Oaen L*/M*/*/MailData | open -f -a TextEdit

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).

A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Post the contents of that window, if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.

The Envelope Index is where I said it is. Please review the instructions and try again.

You wrote earlier that only PDF attachments were involved. Please send yourself a test message with a PDF attachment, and also one with some other kind of attachment, such as a zip file. What happens?

Please follow these directions to delete the Mail "sandbox" folder.

Back up all data.

Triple-click the line below to select it:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Reveal

from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a folder named "com.apple.mail" selected. If it does, move the selected folder — not just its contents — to the Desktop. Leave the Finder window open for now.

Quit and relaunch Mail, and test. If the problem is resolved, you may have to recreate some of your Mail settings. You can then delete the folder you moved and close the Finder window. If you still have the problem, quit Mail again and put the folder back where it was, overwriting the one that may have been created in its place. Post your results.

Caution: If you change any of the contents of the sandbox, but leave the folder itself in place, Mail may crash or not launch at all. Deleting the whole sandbox will cause it to be rebuilt automatically.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C). In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.