Find the email a saved attachment was sent with
Jan 25, '13 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: Sesquipedalian
Jan 25, '13 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: Sesquipedalian
If you save an attachment from an e-mail message, and later need to find exactly which message it came from but cannot remember which it was, it can be done with a little bit of work.
First, select the file in the Finder and open its Info window by pressing Command-I. In the More Info section, you should see the file's "Where from" information. This will list the sender's name and address and the subject line of the message that the file was originally attached to. You can first use this information to try searching in Mail for the message. Many times, that's all you'll need to do.
However, if that doesn't cut it for you - for example, you have multiple revisions of a file that were sent back and forth in a series of messages, and you need to determine which came from which - there is one more bit of metadata in the "Where from" information that can solve that for you.
Copy the part of the "Where from" information that looks something like this:
[kirkmc adds: Nice hint, but it doesn't always work for me. The Where from information is often truncated, and I can't copy the entire path as shown above. However, there's another way to do this: in Terminal, type mdls, press the spacebar, then drag the file to the Terminal window and press Return. This displays all the Spotlight metadata for the file. You'll find the Where from section near the bottom, and you can copy it in its entirety there, then paste it into Safari.
And I'm thinking that someone should be able to create an AppleScript that parses this information with a bit of grep, then sends it to Safari, hence making it possible to create a droplet which will do the trick. Anyone?]
First, select the file in the Finder and open its Info window by pressing Command-I. In the More Info section, you should see the file's "Where from" information. This will list the sender's name and address and the subject line of the message that the file was originally attached to. You can first use this information to try searching in Mail for the message. Many times, that's all you'll need to do.
However, if that doesn't cut it for you - for example, you have multiple revisions of a file that were sent back and forth in a series of messages, and you need to determine which came from which - there is one more bit of metadata in the "Where from" information that can solve that for you.
Copy the part of the "Where from" information that looks something like this:
message:%3CCD253A37.36E7E%25sender@example.com%3E Switch to Safari and paste that into the address field. Mail will activate and show you the message (assuming it still exists).
[kirkmc adds: Nice hint, but it doesn't always work for me. The Where from information is often truncated, and I can't copy the entire path as shown above. However, there's another way to do this: in Terminal, type mdls, press the spacebar, then drag the file to the Terminal window and press Return. This displays all the Spotlight metadata for the file. You'll find the Where from section near the bottom, and you can copy it in its entirety there, then paste it into Safari.
And I'm thinking that someone should be able to create an AppleScript that parses this information with a bit of grep, then sends it to Safari, hence making it possible to create a droplet which will do the trick. Anyone?]
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