Apparently I’ve gone over my quota on my work email account, and since I have a ton of large attachments, I’d like to just delete the attachments and keep the emails for my records. However, I can’t see a way to delete just the attachments. Is it possible? I’m working off an IMAP server, if it matters.
I don’t think that’s possible in Thunderbird. I think its handling of attachments is a big shortcoming. For your situation, you could always move messages to local folders on your machine.
Hm. Are there any extensions that deal with the attachment shortcomings?
You open the message and save it as new. Before you actually save it, though, you delete the attachment. The message will be saved in Drafts and you can move it back to the correct folder at the end of the process, after you’ve deleted the attachment-rich orignal.
Apparently, there is no direct way to do this on a list of emails.
Is this something that Outlook or another email client will easily do? Just curious.
Before Tbird, I’ve used mainly two email clients in Windows: MS Outlook and Forte Agent, and both of those let you delete attachments. Well, in Agent, you can save the attachments in a message or in a whole list of messages, which deletes them from the message itself.
I’m no MS fan, but Outlook’s handling of attachments is exceptional, I have to admit. If someone sends me an attachment, such as an Excel spreadsheet, I can open it by double-clicking it in the message, then make changes, and save the data in Excel. Then I can simply forward the message I was viewing, and the recipient gets a copy with my changes. And if you make changes to an attachment, it asks you when closing the message if you want to keep your changes or not. This way of handling attachments greatly simplifies email traffic in the business world. I’d like to see Tbird parrot it.
There is a Thunderbird extension to strip attachments from messages: here . Also, I believe this ability will be coming in the next major release of Thunderbird (1.1), in the next few months.
that extension is perfect. thanks, lostinspace.