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Mail attachments disappeared with Sierra

After upgrading to Sierra, for all my encrypted emails (mime) the attachments disappeared.

I do not see anything just a question mark instead of the attachment in each email.

With a backup I reimported a second time the mails but it hasn't changed anything.

Is ti a Sierra bug ? How to solve it ?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Sep 22, 2016 1:36 PM

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Posted on Sep 23, 2016 8:51 AM

More information:


I opened one email with an attachment directly copied from my El Capitan backup and opened it in Sierra Mail app by doublecliking. It was working perfectly the attachment was visible.

I searched the same email in Sierra Mail App and the attachment was not anymore readable (just a question mark appears instead).


Conclusion: I thing that, while importing mailboxes, sierra mail is corrupting a part of the emails (.emlx) which are after import not anymore readable !

137 replies

Oct 17, 2016 9:33 AM in response to DSITech1

Starting immediately upon upgrading to Sierra, I started getting intermittent missing attachments to normal – not encrypted – Apple Mail client emails. It is very frequent, but not always. Tech savvy senders are double confirming the attachments are sent, but not showing up in my Mail client. Oddly, on the email list the "has attachment paperclip" appears, but when the mail is opening the paperclip, and the attachment, disappears. Apple tech did a screen share and verified something was very amiss. Confirmed case have had attachments that were DOCs and PDFs from Outlook, GoDaddy and Yahoo IMAP servers. When I use the GoDaddy web client to look at the same emails with the missing attachments, the attachment ARE there on the GoDaddy web client and on my iOS 10 clients. Mail mailbox rebuild seemed to help, then the attachments disappeared again. Apple tech support says it is aware of the problem but doesn't have a fix yet. In the mean time, if you see a paperclip on the email list in Mail, but the attachment is not there when you open the email, the workaround is to open the email in an email client other than Apple Mail on Sierra to get and save your attachment.

Oct 17, 2016 10:39 AM in response to pedro ramon

I fear that this discussion thread contains postings about two distinct bugs in Sierra. One involves attachments to S/MIME encrypted emails that can't be opened and the other involves attachments to regular, non encrypted, emails and the attachments go away in Mail but can be seen in web mail. I know of no way to fix the problem so that the discussion thread will again concern a single issue.

On another topic, just as a reminder, there is no reason to think that Apple technical employees read postings to a discussion thread such as this one. If you want Apple to fix a bug, you need to document it using feedback.

Oct 18, 2016 2:20 PM in response to pedro ramon

I have the same problem with my hotmail account in the Mail app and have spent 2 days on the phone with Apple support, trying to resolve this issue, without success. The same attachments sent through my Apple account work fine however. Apple technical support had me re-format my hard drive and re-install OS Sierra and restore my computer from a time machine backup, to no avail. I still have this problem on both my iMac and my MacBook Pro. After wasting 2 days on this I decided to wait for an update, but this has not yet materialised.

Oct 18, 2016 2:31 PM in response to pedro ramon

Sadly my only solution was to use TimeMachine to downgrade my system back to El Capitan. It was an overnight job and I spent another day reimporting my work email, but I'm back up and running. My PKI certificates are working again. Unfortunately I don't have time to wait for Apple to address this problem. I seem to recall they had broken this before a few years back and it took several releases to fix the problem. I wouldn't hold your breath on this one.

Oct 18, 2016 2:57 PM in response to richard.d.moore

I've used Macs since 1989, and have never seen this particular problem in Mail, or other email apps before Mail.

It's been reported to Apple Feedback and to Apple Support by several people, and as there are three Support Communities threads (at least) on this issue.

As far as I've experienced, and as far as all the reports I've seen say, this only affects Mail's display of attachments, not the attachment files themselves stored on the sender's Mac or the received emails at the other end.

Oct 21, 2016 1:26 PM in response to DSITech1

Same issue ; upgraded more than a week ago but problem started suddenly today

Attachments not shown and not to be found although apparently still linked to emails (based on emails size and the fact that the paper-clip is shown beside the sender mail address -but not in the view columns !-).

Please fix this ASAP !!!

Thanks

PS: strongly regretting to have done this upgrade ; weird logic to handle windows, search not working well,... not user friendly at all !

Mail attachments disappeared with Sierra

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