mail attachment don't open in el capitan

What happens when you try? What about other kinds of attachments?

My wife is also having issues with attachments in Mail after installing El Capitan. But I don't know if it's the same problem that ikrami is experiencing.

My wife's problem is that the attachments do not download properly and are incomplete. It appears to be related to her heavy use of On My Mac mailboxes and mail's Rules (in preferences).

For example she has an On My Mac mailbox called LCCH. Any email sent from a particular list of email addresses, is moved into this mailbox. The same email is also copied into a mailbox still on the server called scan-ham (used to train SpamAssassin). So essentially there are two copies of the same email (or at least there should be except that mail's Rules seem to be so hit and miss!) Anyway, there should be two identical copies of the email. What she has been finding post El Capitan, is that the On My Mac version has an incomplete attachment, but the scan-ham mailbox on the server has the complete attachment.

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

I am unable to open several jpg, pdf or ppt at this stage. Some files seem to work and others have an icon that looks like it has a download bar across the bottom, but it is empty. If I go into my webmail/cpanel of my hosting I can download the file from there. These are not all super large files - most less than 1MB. This is definitely impacting on my ability to work efficiently and very frustrating!

On my MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012), also on El Capitan (10.11) my email doesn't even appear to be working as IMAP. I have received some emails that appear in Mail on my desktop, but then when I open my laptop, the email is not there, not even in my Smart Mailboxes for all emails received this week.

Any suggestions on settings that might fix would be appreciated.

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

That's what happens to me also ikrami - either the image is there or there is that icon and doesn't react to anything. I can't use the 'Save Attachment' option either - nothing happens. 😠

This is exactly my problem, did anyone find a resolve? I've had to turn off my rules for now.

Yes, same for me. All attachment types, not just jpegs.

Please take these steps to delete the Mail "sandbox" folders.

Step 1

Back up all data.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page 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.

Restart the computer. Launch Mail and test. If the problem is resolved, you may have to recreate some of your Mail settings. Any custom stationery that you created may be lost. Ask for instructions if you want to preserve that data. You can then delete the folder you moved and close the Finder window.

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.

Step 2

If Step 1 doesn't solve the problem, repeat with this line:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.MailServiceAgent

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

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You may not see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

So far this appears to have worked Linc - thank you! I have just received an updated powerpoint presentation of the one that wouldn't download. This time it was fine. Fingers crossed this keeps working as I have to travel o/s shortly and don't want to be logging on to web servers constantly just to get my emails. Thank you for your help!

I have the same problem as others have mentioned. I cannot open any kind of attachment in my mails since El Capitan.

I use iMac and my wife uses Macbook Pro and she has the same problem, too.

The remedy you have suggested looks too complicated, I may even say too dangerous for me to attempt.

I guess there are others like me who use computers and send/receive emails without being able to go into such details.

Isn't there a possibility to draw the attention of Apple to this problem so that they can solve it via an update or otherwise?

Starting from scratch again - just received an email with a powerpoint attachment and it wouldn't open in Apple Mail. I hope they fix this in an update very quickly as it is super frustrating. Just seems to be random.

I will be finding the Apple feedback/suggestions site and I'm sure won't be the only one complaining about this issue.

New solution for everyone to try and advise if it is working......I was using the viewing pane to read my emails (so, headers in the left column, message in the right column and just had to click on the message once to read). I couldn't save or download the dud attachments from there. However, if I double-clicked on the incoming email to open in a separate window, the misbehaving attachment was available to save, quick look, download etc.

Curious to know if this works for others. I just tried this today after receiving a .docm file that wouldn't open (but the PDF files in the same message were fine). I did remove the ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail folder the other day, so that obviously didn't fix things.

A very odd fix, but if it means I don't have to keep going to my Cpanel to access my emails I will be happy. 😕

I have completed both steps. No immediate change, though no new emails with attachments have arrived yet. I will keep an eye on it.

One thing it did change though, was the actions performed in the rules I mentioned in my original post.

For example she has an On My Mac mailbox called LCCH. Any email sent from a particular list of email addresses, is moved into this mailbox. The same email is also copied into a mailbox still on the server called scan-ham (used to train SpamAssassin).

The destination of the action that should copy the email to the scan-ham folder, has been changed to the LCCH mailbox. i.e the email is moved to LCCH, and copied to LCCH. This behaviour was happening periodically anyway, Mail rules keep changing.

As I was saying (before my computer crashed, and I am no longer able to edit my post) ... This behaviour was happening periodically anyway, but performing Linc's Step 1, forced it to happen again.