Remove files attached to messages in Outlook, Thunderbird, and Yahoo Mail

Outlook, Thunderbird, and Yahoo Mail put Gmail and Hotmail to shame in one important area: handling attachments. Moving e-mail-attached files to a folder on your PC is a breeze in Outlook, Thunderbird, and Yahoo Mail. Doing the same in Gmail and Hotmail? Forget it!

Freeware strips e-mail attachments in a few clicks
Back in June 2008, I wrote about Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover donationware, which lets you save some or all of the files attached to Outlook messages to your PC or network. The program adds a button to Outlook's menu that opens a single dialog box showing your attachment-removal options.

Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover's single dialog lets you save attachments to a folder outside Outlook.

(Credit: Kopf)

The attachments can be removed from the message or simply copied to a separate folder. You can detach specific types of files, remove files larger than a size you choose, and save images embedded in the body of messages. Other options let you overwrite or rename duplicate files, reproduce subfolders in the target folder, and even return the files you remove to the e-mails they were originally attached to.

You get many of the same options in Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail program via the AttachmentExtractor donationware. After you download and install the add-on and restart Thunderbird, an AE Extract button is added to Thunderbird's toolbar and an AttachmentExtractor option is added to the program's Tools menu.

Selecting either option opens the add-on's settings, which let you select the target folder, save attachments of certain types or with specific attributes, and auto-extract all attachments or only those meeting specific criteria. You can also delete some or all of the attachments, mark the messages as read, and delete the messages automatically.

The AttachmentExtractor add-on for Mozilla Thunderbird provides several options for handling e-mail attachments.

(Credit: AttachmentExtractor)

Download attachments in Yahoo Mail
It's no secret that Webmail services can't match the features of their desktop counterparts, but when it comes to attachments, Yahoo Mail can teach Gmail and Hotmail a thing or two. While Gmail and Hotmail make it easy to find messages with specific types of attachments via search operators, downloading them once you've found them is another matter.

By comparison, zipping and downloading the files attached to your Yahoo Mail messages takes only a couple of clicks. In Yahoo Mail's Classic interface, click My Attachments in the left pane, select those you want to save, or click Check All to choose them all. Then click the Save to Computer button and choose Zip & Download Files button.

Yahoo Mail's attachment-extraction option makes it easy to save e-mail attachments to your PC.

(Credit: Yahoo)

All the attachments are saved in a single zipped file to your browser's default file-download location. You don't get the many options provided in Outlook Attachment Remover or Thunderbird's AttachmentExtractor add-on, but at least the files are backed up and available on your PC or removable medium. I still haven't figured out how to accomplish the same feat with the attachments in Gmail and Hotmail.

Gmail and Hotmail do let you search for all attachments, and in Gmail you can find files by name or extension. To find all messages with attachments, enter has:attachment in the search box of either Gmail or Hotmail and press Enter. Gmail lets you add filename:*.doc, for example, to find only messages to which a Word .doc file is attached. You'll find a complete list of Gmail search operators on the service's help site.

Unfortunately, once you find the attachments in Gmail and Hotmail, there's not much you can do with them except open them one at a time and forward them to a POP or IMAP account. Then you can detach or otherwise process the attachments using one of the free add-ons described above.

You can also set Gmail to automatically forward messages to a POP or IMAP account. (In Hotmail you can forward automatically only to another Microsoft mail service.) I described how to forward mail from Gmail to Outlook and Thunderbird in a post from December 2007.

This won't help you detach the files already received by your Gmail account because there's no way to forward messages in bulk from Gmail. I realize that such a capability would be a spammer's dream come true, but a feature that lets you detach in bulk the files attached to Gmail messages would be nice.

[infinitelee]

I'm confused. Once you've located a Gmail message with one or more attachments, the three options are always view, open (if the attachment is compatible with Google Docs), and download. If there's more than one attachment, you can download all attachments as a single zip file. While it's certainly true that Gmail does not provide any native mechanism to download attachments from multiple messages at once, it is NOT true that you can't download one or all of the attachments from a single message, whether it is a sent or received message. Did I misunderstand your article?

I personally never download attachments unless I need to print them, and even if I do, I have no wish to delete them from the messages that delivered them. The email message serves as metadata for the attachments. I'm far more likely to remember who sent me an attachment, or a subject line, or what the message was about, than the filename for the attachment itself. Thus if I leave the attachment where it is, it's much easier for me to find. And since Gmail is currently at 7+ GB per free account, there's no reason for me to do anything with those attachments. My Gmail account is five years old, and I'm only using about 15% of the available storage. (Yahoo! Mail is unlimited, but since I'm effortlessly staying well under Gmail's limit, that's not much of a feature for me. It might be for someone else. Frankly, the fact that features like offline and forwarding are only available for pay accounts with Yahoo! Mail is a major downside.)

That being said, I agree that a tool to remove or copy attachments from multiple messages at the same time is a useful feature. Google Labs has produced lots of useful optional add-ons; an attachment tool is worth putting into the suggestion box.

[doreilly]

Yes, the story refers to the ability to download multiple attachments at once. For backup and security purposes, I want a local copy of many of the files attached to messages I receive in Gmail. Doing so one message/attachment at a time is tedious. That's why I'd like the ability to download many attachments in one operation.

Thanks,
Dennis

[lethal57]

You guys should be more clear when you say label something as 'outlook', as this often also referes to outlook express.
In this case and also the case of xobni...it does not.

Lack of clarification is bordering on misleading.

Lethal