Mail attachments going missing (when move messages to new mailbox)
 

Hi all.

This is related to Snow Leopard's Mail - Version 4.6 (1085).

When I move messages out of my inbox, and into a newly created local mailbox, most of the time, my attachments disappear. They work just fine, and show up just fine, before being moved out of the inbox, but afterwards I get mixed results.

Worst case scenario is that the attachments show up as 0 (zero) kb and also won't open, save, or be Quicklooked. Sometimes, even within the same message, one picture might remain intact and in-place, while the other will disappear and be reduced to zero kb. Sometimes, even though being reported as zero kb, I can still QL the attachments and open them in a full application, but maybe not save them to another location. It's very inconsistent even when done in short succession and with no apparently changing variables.

Needless to say, this appears to be a data-loss bug, and I'm pretty pissed-off about it. Can't stand losing important data, or even trivial data.

Internet connection is working.

I also have found that if I use my iPhone to move messages which have attachments into iCloud's Archive mailbox, then move from there into a local mailbox using the Mac, that attachments transfer no problem.

I was, unfortunately, too late in finding that out, and dozens of messages are now broken. Would anybody out there know how to fix these messages by somehow re-attaching the missing data? Most of the attachments are in the Mail Downloads folder, but not all, and it should be noted that as I tried opening these attachments, I would get duplicates and triplicates appearing in that Mail Downloads folder.

Have also tried opening up permissions on the newly created mailbox, and one or two other Mail folders. No improvement.

It's just a bad bug which has not been patched, and will never be patched. :(

Forgot to mention that rebuilding the mailboxes does not resolve this issue, though it does work very well to repair / refresh images which were being corrupted by Mail (but which showed up fine on the iPhone).

Re-creating the Envelope Index also does not resolve this issue, and have tried multiple different combinations of these two techniques to no avail.

Just noticed that, after searching deep inside of my Mail folders, in Finder, that the missing attachments are still in the INBOX.imapmbox, they aren't being moved into the local mailbox (folder) that I created. There is however usually an attachment which appears to be a copy of those attachments, but is zero kb in size, and that is inside of the newly created mailbox. So, it looks like all data is still there, I hope, but Mail has confused itself and doesn't know where to look for the full attachment.

Oh, and forgot to mention that if I move the broken messages back into the inbox from the local mailbox, that doesn't fix the problem either. The attachments are not being shown inside of the messages after doing that.

Are you moving the messages from an IMAP server Inbox to a local mailbox (folder)?
There is an "automatically download attachments" option in the Accounts Advanced settings -- perhaps if that's off, they don't get downloaded until actually requested, but the connection breaks when you move it offline? (Guessing.)

Alternatively, I would suggest using Smart Folders to organise your email. I rarely move my emails about -- it's all done with SFs.

I guess if iCloud is IMAP, then the answer is yes.

That option I always enable. It's still enabled. I just checked.

The attachments show up in-line within the e-mail messages when viewed in the inbox.

Yes, when I move them "offline", as you phrase it, the connection gets broken, but be aware I'm doing this while connected to the internet.

Love smart folders. Use them all the time. Don't want to leave tens of thousands of e-mails sitting on a remote server though, so I periodically take them down and archive locally.

Maybe this will clarify?

I isolated just one problematic message into its own mailbox so that I could see clearly what was happening. I copied the full attachment into the 53153 directory, but it wasn't recognized by Mail. So, I rebuilt that mailbox to try and get Mail to recognize it, but it created the 53154 directory on its own, with the zero kb gif! It also renamed the e-mail message, which used to be 53153, to 53154.

I've done this several times, and each time the same. It's like it's running away from that attachment.

What file tells Mail where to look for the attachments associated with each e-mail message? If I could figure that out, and maybe edit that, then I'd be a lot closer to success.

For comparison:

Above is another new mailbox with just a single working message. Notice that when I rebuilt it, just out of curiosity, there was a new working attachment created.

I wish I had an answer for you. Mail.app does seem to do some weird stuff with attachments. I run Mail on 10.7 and my attachments no longer show. They're there. I can select a message and choose download all attachments, for example. Attachments don't show in the message though. I don't know how Mail is eating attachments.

Thanks for posting that info here seesolve. Billions of users on the 'net and not a single peep from anybody for weeks! Seems like I primarily post things here as a reminder to myself later on after I forget all the things I've done to try and resolve the problem. :rolleyes:

I know. I hate when that happens to me.

This is by no means a solution. It's just something I'm using for the moment. Honestly, I think the only solution is another email client.

Anyway, it's rumored that Mail.app gets wonky after a few thousand email messages, so I started backing up email messages using [url="http://www.mailsteward.com/"]MailSteward[url]. I find attachments in there with no problem. MailSteward is ugly, but it's got a nice search system, and it's free up to 15K emails.

Thanks!

I should also note that Mail may be corrupting perfectly good attachments from friends, often.

Usually, I see the attachments in a message on my iPhone, but then I go to the Mac to actually download them because Wi-Fi is much faster here. After downloading is finished, the photos will be visibly damaged on the Mac. This happens even when I download them completely on the iPhone first, then later on the Mac. When viewing the same attachments on the iPhone, they appear just fine. On the other hand, if I never view the messages on the iPhone, only on the Mac, attachments seem to come down fine, and direct marketing messages always seem to work just fine.

This necessitates that I save the iPhone images to the camera roll and transfer via Image Capture, then delete the corrupted message from Mail. If I forget to save the images to the camera roll before deleting, the images are gone forever. (Alternatively, I can use Remove Attachments to ditch the corrupted images, but keep the text of the message in-place.)

This is bad news! :(

The really scary thing is that attachments which I send out from Mail have been reported as arriving unopenable from time to time. They appear and open just fine on my iPhone (which is not the device I sent from), so this would appear to suggest that something under the hood of iCloud is to blame! :(

…or could it be a problem caused by the Wi-Fi service at my apartment complex? I now have a sinking suspicion that is the most likely culprit in this mystery.

There is a setting in Mail to send Windows-friendly attachments. Have you enabled that option?

Yes, I use that whenever possible. I think it's enabled by default now too.

Anyway, your reply came into my e-mail system as "IDG Mailer" instead of "The macosxhints Forums". Not sure what caused that change, but get rid of it!

Also, must wait 90 seconds in-between posts = garbage!

A friend sent in a message containing a photo of corn soup today. Saw it come in on the iPhone, I jumped onto the Mac immediately to download, photo was corrupted on the Mac. Looks just fine on the iPhone. Looks just fine on iCloud web service. Friend sent again. Same message with same photo. Corrupted again on the Mac, but in a slightly different way. Garbage!

Moved both photos to a local mailbox on the Mac and tried Rebuild. No improvement.

Tried to move them back onto the server and got this message:

Interestingly, or maybe horrifyingly, if I move bad messages to a sub-mailbox on iCloud instead of locally on my Mac, and do a Rebuild, the photos will become newly corrupted in strange and unique ways, every time. I can just keep hitting Rebuild and get different results. What are the odds that I'll get it to look exactly as it was meant to look? Better or worse than playing the lottery?