Remove the attachments from your Outlook e-mail

On Monday, I described Vaita's free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover, an add-on that finds duplicate copies of Outlook messages, contacts, calendar entries, and tasks. Now, I'll continue to trim my bloated Outlook in-box by using another freebie: the Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover created by Bruno Marotta.

After you download the program and restart Outlook, you see a floating Attachment Remover toolbar that you can drag and dock at the top of the screen along with all the other toolbars to keep it from blocking your view. Click the toolbar's one-and-only button to open the program's one-and-only dialog box.

The Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover shrinks your in-box by storing attachments in a separate folder and placing links to the files in the original messages.

(Credit: Kopf/Bruno Marotta)

You can choose the folder to scan for attachments, the type of files to remove, the size limit (the default setting is to remove all file attachments more than 10KB in size), the folder to place the attachments in, and whether to replace the file with a link or text message, or to simply remove it.

The add-on will recreate the structure of the folders and subfolders you scan, but I wish it offered a way to separate attachments by file type or by sender prior to the scan. This would let me detach all the PDFs from my boss, for example.

Since Outlook Attachment Remover is donationware, be sure to drop a couple of bills in the hat if you find the program beneficial.

Wednesday: tweak the Registry to return missing icons to the system tray.

[ty2286]

What happens if you want to forward the email with the extracted attachment. Does it re-include it automatically or does it just send the link, which I think would be problematic.

[inetdog]

One way to deal with that problem would be to apply the tool only to emails that you are archiving and are unlikely to forward in their entirety. It seems unlikely that the tool would automatically re-insert a separated attachment, but it would be easy enough to do that manually as long as you do not separate the attachments from "active" emails.
I know that in my case it would not be a hardhship, since most of my inbox is there for long term reference rather than active use.

[inetdog]

More of a problem for me would be the limitations on access to the archive drive when I am moving from machine to machine and in and out of my corporate network.

I use the Outlook feature which replicates my entire server-based Inbox on my laptop for disconnected use, but my server-based inbox is still there for access from my desktop and from shared machines without having to have access to a single shared network drive.

[doreilly]

If you have the "leave a copy on the server" option checked (as I do for my ISP mail account), the message can be accessed from other machines with the attachment in place.

[lureho]

I find this software very useful however I have some questions or concerns:

1.Let's say that you remove attachments from your active inbox email if latter on you decide to backup or archive that inbox it will be not complete because you already removed attachments so backup or archive will be incomplete and this will limit any possibility of backup or archive

2.I liked the idea that the software removes attachement and places a link to the file, but what happens if that location of files is changed into another folder or somewhere else. I guess the link will not work anymore which will mean a lot of headache.

So I guess the best way is to archive the inbox folder regularly and to remove attachments from that archive.

Any other idea?

[imoDOTcom]

TO INETDOG:

"I use the Outlook feature which replicates my entire server-based Inbox on my laptop for disconnected use,......."

May I ask how you do that??
That would help me a lot.
Thank you in advance!

imoDOTcom