Removing Attachments

[Klaatu]

I'm using Mountain Lion and Apple Mail. When I send or receive an email with an attachment, I know how to save the attachments.

Question: if I want to put the email in a mail folder without the attachment, how can I remove the attachment?

If I highlight just the attachment and enter the Delete key, it deletes the entire email.

Much thanx.

 

[Kaveman]

The Email came with the Attachment, you can't edit received emails. You could forward it to yourself, that will strip the attachment.

The Attachments are stored in the Library > Mail Downloads folder, you could delete them from there, but Mail might not be happy about it.

 

[Klaatu]

"Mail might not be happy about it" sounds ominous...I found the Mail Download folder...but I didn't have the courage to delete the files...

What's likely to happen if I delete them?

 

[Kaveman]

I'm sorry I don't know, I don't go messing with it, but if I've lost an Attachment I come here to get another copy.

Mail maintains a database, if this has links to files and data about the files in here and them can't locate them, it could upset the database.

Why do you want to remove them?

 

[Klaatu]

I don't know...it may be a hangover from the days when hard drives were much smaller and clutter was actually a serious problem.

Thanx for your help - it's always much appreciated.

 

[theALmighty66]

Did you ever wind up deleting files from Mail Attachments?

I'm really thinking about removing all mail attachments myself to free a LOT of hard disk space—but I'm not sure the best way to go about it.