Do you own a Macbook Pro or Macbook Air from a few years ago? Then you might have noticed your hard drive’s free space rapidly decrease, mainly due to the relatively small size of the hard drives of these Macs. Now, if you take a closer look at your Mac’s hard drive, besides the usual suspects (like your music or photo libraries), you’ll notice that the Mail app can take a lot of space by the time you’ve been using your Mac for only a year.
Cool Tip: There are several tools to check the space on your Mac’s hard drive. In this other entry for example, we take a look at Daisy Disk.- By default, Apple’s email app automatically download all the recent attachments (up to 15 months old) regardless of their importance. As I like to manage storage smartly, I found this feature unnecessary. And hence, I decided to completely stop Mac’s Mail app from downloading attachments automatically.
- In the Mail app on your Mac, do one of the following. Include or exclude original attachments in a reply: In the toolbar of the message window, click the Include Attachment button or the Exclude Attachment button. Include or exclude original attachments in all replies: From the Message viewer, choose Edit Attachments Include Original Attachments in Reply (a checkmark shows it’s on).
- May 04, 2016 OS X: Turning Off Inline Mail Attachments. Visit our Mac Geek Gab Q&A Forums and have the tech support brilliance of the entire Mac Geek Gab community at your fingertips!
Apr 12, 2020 A lot of Mac users access their email accounts using the Safari web browser. They can write, send, and receive emails from Safari, instead of an email client (such as the Mac Mail app). Most of these users use a webmail service such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail or AOL Mail. Some users are experiencing that email attachments are not opening. Apr 12, 2020 A lot of Mac users access their email accounts using the Safari web browser. They can write, send, and receive emails from Safari, instead of an email client (such as the Mac Mail app). Most of these users use a webmail service such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail or AOL Mail. Some users are experiencing that email attachments are not opening.
If your Mac is suffering from this issue, read along to learn how to get rid of unnecessary attachments in Mail and reclaim valuable hard drive space.
Let’s get started.
1. Delete Individual and Group Attachments
The majority of the space taken up by Mail is due to the size of attached files on messages, which Mail downloads and archives for offline access by default. However, Mail also allows you to delete attachments from both individual or groups of messages.
Important Note: Be aware though, if you use this option, the attachments you delete will also be deleted from the server of your email service, since Mail both receives ![Attachments Attachments](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126445285/313048156.jpg)
To do this, select any message or group of messages on Mail and on the menu bar click on Message. Then, from the available options, select Remove Attachments and you are done.
As mentioned above, due to your attachments being deleted also from your server, this method is not the most recommended. However, if you follow our next tip, you can put it to good use.
2. Group Messages with Attachments
But let’s say you don’t want to get rid of all your attachments, but only of some of them. Well, you can use one of OS X’s neatest features for this: Smart Folders.
Start by clicking on the + sign at the bottom left of the Mail window and selecting New Smart Mailbox.
Leave the box as is except for the single rule: Contains Attachments. Additionally, you can also check both boxes below that to make sure messages from both the Trash and the Sent folders are included.
Next, click on OK and the new smart mailbox will be created and will start adding messages immediately. Once all your messages with attachments are there, you will be free to look at each of them and decide which attachments are worth staying and which don’t.
3. Backing Up and Deleting Attachments Straight from Your Mac’s Hard Drive
This approach definitely entails more work, but it provides better results and (most importantly) your attachments will not be deleted from your mail server.
Start by heading to your Library folder (in this post we show you how). There, look for the Mail folder and open it.
Inside, you’ll find another folder most likely named something like V2. Open that one as well. Then you will see one or more folders depending on the number of email accounts you have in Mail. These folders will be prefixed with either IMAP or POP, followed by your email address and other information. Identify the email account you want to clean up and open its folder.
Inside you will find other folders. Here, look for the ones that contain a folder inside named with various random characters.
Inside this folder, you will find another one named Data, and inside that one, there will be a series of numbered folders with their own, different sub-folders.
Now here’s the trick. Instead of looking into each one of these manually, type the word Attachments on the Finder window search bar. Once you do, select Data instead of This Mac as your filter, sort the results by Kind and the window will display all the folders with attachments contained in that section of your email account.
Now take some time to make a backup of those attachments. Once you do, you can safely delete them and repeat the process for a couple of other folders/accounts you might have.
There are two advantages to this approach: first, it not only lets you create backups of your attachments, but you can do so by separating each email account, which is great for organizational purposes. Second, this method won’t mess up the attachments on your email server. So next time you find a message without attachments on Mail and click on it, Mail will simply re-download its attachments.
After you delete all those Attachment folders, you will be surprised at how much space (an entire GB in most cases) you can get back on your hard drive. Enjoy your extra free space!
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#email #file deletion
Did You Know
Email existed even before the world wide web.
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Mail User Guide
You can include photos, documents, and more when you write messages.
When you attach images or PDF documents, you can mark them up in Mail before you send your message.
Include photos and other files in emails
In the Mail app on your Mac, do any of the following:
- Click the Attach button in the toolbar, locate a file (you may need to click the sidebar button to see additional folders), select it, then click Choose File.You can also drag files from the desktop, the Finder, or an app into your message.
- For photos, click the Photo Browser button in the toolbar, then drag a photo into your message. You can also take a photo or scan documents, or add a sketch, using your nearby iPhone or iPad.
By default, Mail inserts images at their actual size. If different sizes are available, you can choose one from the pop-up menu located on the right side of the message header.
Send large email attachments using Mail Drop
You can use Mail Drop to send files that exceed the maximum size allowed by your email account provider. Mail Drop uploads large attachments to iCloud, where they’re encrypted and stored for up to 30 days.
- If you have an iCloud account and you’re signed in to iCloud when you click Send, Mail automatically sends the attachments using Mail Drop. Mail Drop attachments don’t count against your iCloud storage.
- If you don’t have an iCloud account, or if you’re not signed in, Mail asks you whether to use Mail Drop (to always use Mail Drop select “Don’t ask again for this account”).
If a recipient uses Mail in OS X 10.10 or later, the attachments are included in your message. For other recipients, your message includes links for downloading the attachments, and their expiration date.
You can turn Mail Drop on or off for an account. Choose Mail > Preferences, click Accounts, select the account, click Advanced, then select or deselect “Send large attachments with Mail Drop.”
See the Apple Support article Mail Drop limits.
Put email attachments at the end of messages
In the Mail app on your Mac, do one of the following:
- For the current message: Choose Edit > Attachments > Insert Attachments at End of Message.
- For all messages: From the Message viewer, choose Edit > Attachments > Always Insert Attachments at End of Message (a checkmark shows it’s on).
Include or exclude email attachments in replies
In the Mail app on your Mac, do one of the following:
- Include or exclude original attachments in a reply: In the toolbar of the message window, click the Include Attachment button or the Exclude Attachment button .
- Include or exclude original attachments in all replies: From the Message viewer, choose Edit > Attachments > Include Original Attachments in Reply (a checkmark shows it’s on). To turn it off and exclude attachments, choose the command again (the checkmark is removed).
Send email attachments to Windows users
In the Mail app on your Mac, try these suggestions:
- Send Windows-friendly attachments. To do so for all messages, choose Edit > Attachments, then select Always Send Windows-Friendly Attachments. For a specific message, click the Attach button in the toolbar of the new message window, then select Send Windows-Friendly Attachments (if you don’t see the checkbox, click Options in the bottom corner).
- Send documents as PDFs instead of in their original format.
- Use filename extensions (such as .docx for a Microsoft Word document).
- If the recipient sees two attachments (such as “MyFile” and “._MyFile”), the recipient can ignore the file with the underscore (such as “._MyFile”).
To display an attachment (such as a one-page PDF document or an image) as an icon, Control-click the attachment in your message, then choose View as Icon. To show the attachment again, Control-click it, then choose View in Place.
Mac Email Attachment
If the message size shown on the left side of the message header is red, the attachments are causing your message to exceed size limits set by your email account provider. Try reducing the number or size of attachments or use Mail Drop.
Mac Os Mail Application
See alsoEmail a webpage shared from Safari in Mail on Mac