10.4: Remove attachments in Mail to save disk space

Nov 23, '05 06:06:00AM

Contributed by: windrag

Tiger only hintI've been using the excellent utility WhatSize (a long-ago Pick of the Week here) to see where I've got file cruft that I can trim away to save space. Using it recently, I noticed that my mailboxes were larger than expected.

In Tiger, Mail messages are saved as individual .emlx files, and double-clicking on the files in WhatSize opens the messages in Mail. The biggest files are, of course, messages with attachments. Without fail, I had saved the attachments I needed to different folders, as necessary, but I hadn't thought to delete the attachments from the original message. That stuff adds up.

I dug through the menus a bit, and found that there is a Message -> Remove Attachments item, but there is no keyboard shortcut for it. A quick trip to System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts took care of that. I added a shorcut for Mail -> Remove Attachments (Control-Command-A for me).

Now, after I save my attachments to where I need them, I'm sure to remove them from my messages to keep the hard drive trim.

[robg adds: If you're going to do this, it's worth the trouble to use WhatSize (or a similar tool of your choice) to dive down into the individual messages first -- make sure you've saved any attachments you wish to save prior to removing them in Mail!]

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