Please: Remove Attachments

ChinaLamb · 4 Dec 2007, 10:23 PM

One feature that is almost essential - the ability to remove attachements from emails.

I am currently using Imap Size, but would love for this functionality to be in Fastmail.

Thanks!

mvpittman · 5 Dec 2007, 03:05 AM

for a group of messages? like the archive/zip options?

what about "Detach message copies into folder"?

hadaso · 5 Dec 2007, 05:24 AM

The needed functionality is removing selected attachments (I would prefer that this be done by replacing them with a small text attachment recording the removal action). This is something I want especially with work related emails: I want to keep mail for the record, but I don't if it has several hundreds KB of attached files that are not needed to be kept with my email (sort of like filing the invoice attached to a parcel, only in email the parcel is attached to the invoice).

Also I need this so can keep email sent by Incredimail users without having to keep their 40KM ad that accompanies every single mail they send. And also there are some companies that have ads injected into the outgoing email of their employees. For instance the mother of one of the kids in my son's class is working for the local cable TV here and email she sent to the parents's mailing list from her work address had advertisements about TV programs (with lots of graphics, of course, and they never know how to really compress them). So that's another reason why it's becoming important to be able to delete parts of email and do it effortlessly.

akorvemaker · 6 Dec 2007, 04:14 AM

Agreed. I use Apple Mail and Thunderbird to remove attachments, but I'd much rather do it from the web interface. It's a pain to SSH to my home machine, start up a remote desktop connection, and launch a mail client just to delete an attachment...

(Yes, there are probably easier ways, but that's how I tend to do it

)

beq · 6 Dec 2007, 05:32 AM

Is it possible to remove attachments without having to scrap the message and create a new one (with new UID and arrival time) in the Cyrus IMAP database?

hadaso · 6 Dec 2007, 05:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beq

Is it possible to remove attachments without having to scrap the message and create a new one (with new UID and arrival time) in the Cyrus IMAP database?

AFAIK no because altering the message makes it a new message (I guess it is necessary for instance so other IMAP clients that access the same mailstore would be able to synchronize correctly).

brong · 6 Dec 2007, 07:19 AM

Correct - it always becomes a new message. There are some race-conditiony things that mean you _could_ wind up with two messages, and there are some quota issues where if you're close to the limit then it could fail because you want to append the new message _before_ you delete the old one.

rabarberski · 6 Dec 2007, 03:39 PM

I also vote for this to be implemented, it is one of my top 5 (or so) features to be added.

Merovingian · 6 Dec 2007, 09:27 PM

Here's another vote for this much-needed feature. I have many emails that I would like to keep, but like hadaso, not if they have huge files attached to it that I have already downloaded and saved elsewhere.

NumberSix · 7 Dec 2007, 04:50 AM

Since no one else has done so, I'll just point out A) This thread should have been posted in the feature requests forum, and B) this is a feature that has been requested many many times before. We all want it, but there are apparently non-trivial difficulties to its implementation, which have caused it to be back-burnered.

Dave

ChinaLamb · 7 Dec 2007, 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NumberSix

Since no one else has done so, I'll just point out A) This thread should have been posted in the feature requests forum...

There have also been a lot of posts that the fastmail forums should only have 1 forum because this is the one everyone looks at, not the feature requests and not the other one. Posts looking for syncable address books and other issues are posted here as well. To post something like this in this forum is not unreasonable.

B) I have not seen this topic posted as many times as you seem to say so. Regardless - and even if it has, wanted features get posted many times. Through many posts things draw the attention of the developers. Again this is not unreasonable to have posted again.

/Cl

brong · 8 Dec 2007, 09:47 PM

If you have the advanced screen on and log in to /beta/ you may notice another little button at the top if you view a message with attachments...

note that this is one of those "20% of the work for 80% of the result" things, and it's an unfinished feature. Usual "don't do this on messages you care about, take a copy first, etc" apply.

That said, if you really mess something up, drop me a note and I'll do a free restore of the folder that it messed up.

Enjoy,

Bron ( was fiddling with MIME parsing code anyway )

brong · 8 Dec 2007, 09:52 PM

Oh, and a discussion of the exact preferred interface would be great too - I know this one sucks a bit. The library I've written for stripping attachments sanely has an interface like this:

StripAttachments($InFh, $OutFh, $DecideProc);

Where $DecideProc is a function which gets the following information:

$PartNum, $Headers

$PartNum => (e.g. 1.2, 2, 4.2.3.1, depending how deeply MIME Nested we are)
$Headers => The MIME headers for this part (Content-Type, Content-Disposition, etc)

It can return either "keep" or "delete".

The current one returns 'keep' if $PartNum is blank (top level message) or if $Headers{'content-type'} matches 'text/'.

Because we have PartNum, it is possible to use checkboxes to only allow removal of single attachments rather than all - but that's not really compatible with a feature that allows checking multiple messages and stripping all the attachments in one go.

Over to you!

Bron.

ChinaLamb · 8 Dec 2007, 10:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brong

If you have the advanced screen on and log in to /beta/ you may notice another little button at the top if you view a message with attachments...

Love the responsiveness!

I logged into the Beta server and looked at a message with an attachment.

On the first one, it removed the attachment, and left another called "removed-part-2.txt". Seems to be a plain text copy of the entire message - though without any attachments.

If I try to remove the "removed-part-2.txt" this doesn't succeed (probably as designed!).

Additionally, the message was downloaded again via POP (because it is a "new" message at this point, correct?). Not a problem as I believe this is the only way to accomplish this, correct? GREAT!!!

But, I went into another message with a .wav attachment but this attachment doesn't appear to be being removed. I have gone into the message 2-3 times to do this and each time.

Went into a 3rd "HTML" message with only one (1) .jpg attachment, removed attachments and that attachment was deleted. A removed-part-1 and part-2.txt were attached to the message. Going back into the message, it stated, "the message has no text, only an attachment." So, the message was in the HTML part of the message that was stripped out as an attachment. If there is no way around this, people may lose important text in their messages.It appears as if the HTML is also seen as an attachment (even though it was not listed as an attachment in the original message).

Cool first part!

/CL

bvaliron · 8 Dec 2007, 11:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChinaLamb

It appears as if the HTML is also seen as an attachment (even though it was not listed as an attachment in the original message).

I confirm this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by brong

Oh, and a discussion of the exact preferred interface would be great too - [...]
Because we have PartNum, it is possible to use checkboxes to only allow removal of single attachments rather than all - but that's not really compatible with a feature that allows checking multiple messages and stripping all the attachments in one go.

On another hand, a mail can be very messy, with several layers of messages attached.

Consider e.g.

Code:

message1
  +-text/plain
  +-text/html
  +-message2
  |     +-text/html
  |     +-text/plain
  |     +-image/jpg
  |     +-message3
  |            +-text/plain
  |            +-application/ms-word
  +-image/png
  +-video/mpeg

I might want to only delete the video/mpeg and to keep the images and the embedded messages. Or I might prefer to delete the video and the messages, but to keep the image/png because it contains valuable data.

Or more simply imagine this case:

Code:

message
 +-text/html
 +-image/png
 +-image/png
 +-image/jpg
 +-application/pdf

Here when I press the "delete attachements" button, I'd like the pdf to go away, and I want keep the text/* and image/* because the images are used in the html part and contains useful informations to understand the message.

But in this mail:

Code:

message
 +-text/plain
 +-text/html
 +-image/jpg
 +-image/jpg

the images are just pictures that I want to remove from the message and I only want to keep the text.

Having a dump algorithm that can automatically delete anything that is not text from mails, for multiple-selection of messages might be useful in some cases.

But I still prefer the idea of having a menu for selecting what to remove.

That way, there is no bad surprise.

-- Benoit.

4 Dec 2007, 10:23 PM	#1
ChinaLamb The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: a virtually impossible but finitely improbable position Posts: 2,320	Please: Remove Attachments One feature that is almost essential - the ability to remove attachements from emails. I am currently using Imap Size, but would love for this functionality to be in Fastmail. Thanks!

5 Dec 2007, 03:05 AM	#2
mvpittman Essential Contributor Join Date: Nov 2001 Posts: 428	for a group of messages? like the archive/zip options? what about "Detach message copies into folder"?

5 Dec 2007, 05:24 AM	#3
hadaso The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Holon, Israel. Posts: 4,848	The needed functionality is removing selected attachments (I would prefer that this be done by replacing them with a small text attachment recording the removal action). This is something I want especially with work related emails: I want to keep mail for the record, but I don't if it has several hundreds KB of attached files that are not needed to be kept with my email (sort of like filing the invoice attached to a parcel, only in email the parcel is attached to the invoice). Also I need this so can keep email sent by Incredimail users without having to keep their 40KM ad that accompanies every single mail they send. And also there are some companies that have ads injected into the outgoing email of their employees. For instance the mother of one of the kids in my son's class is working for the local cable TV here and email she sent to the parents's mailing list from her work address had advertisements about TV programs (with lots of graphics, of course, and they never know how to really compress them). So that's another reason why it's becoming important to be able to delete parts of email and do it effortlessly.

6 Dec 2007, 04:14 AM	#4
akorvemaker Master of the @ Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 1,015	Agreed. I use Apple Mail and Thunderbird to remove attachments, but I'd much rather do it from the web interface. It's a pain to SSH to my home machine, start up a remote desktop connection, and launch a mail client just to delete an attachment... (Yes, there are probably easier ways, but that's how I tend to do it )

6 Dec 2007, 05:32 AM	#5
beq Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: USA Posts: 895	Is it possible to remove attachments without having to scrap the message and create a new one (with new UID and arrival time) in the Cyrus IMAP database?

6 Dec 2007, 07:19 AM	#7
brong The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,696 Representative of: Fastmail.fm	Correct - it always becomes a new message. There are some race-conditiony things that mean you _could_ wind up with two messages, and there are some quota issues where if you're close to the limit then it could fail because you want to append the new message _before_ you delete the old one.

6 Dec 2007, 03:39 PM	#8
rabarberski Master of the @ Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Ghent, Belgium Posts: 1,027	I also vote for this to be implemented, it is one of my top 5 (or so) features to be added.

6 Dec 2007, 09:27 PM	#9
Merovingian Master of the @ Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: U.S.A. Posts: 1,583	Here's another vote for this much-needed feature. I have many emails that I would like to keep, but like hadaso, not if they have huge files attached to it that I have already downloaded and saved elsewhere.

7 Dec 2007, 04:50 AM	#10
NumberSix Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: The Village Posts: 613	Since no one else has done so, I'll just point out A) This thread should have been posted in the feature requests forum, and B) this is a feature that has been requested many many times before. We all want it, but there are apparently non-trivial difficulties to its implementation, which have caused it to be back-burnered. Dave

8 Dec 2007, 09:47 PM	#12
brong The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,696 Representative of: Fastmail.fm	If you have the advanced screen on and log in to /beta/ you may notice another little button at the top if you view a message with attachments... note that this is one of those "20% of the work for 80% of the result" things, and it's an unfinished feature. Usual "don't do this on messages you care about, take a copy first, etc" apply. That said, if you really mess something up, drop me a note and I'll do a free restore of the folder that it messed up. Enjoy, Bron ( was fiddling with MIME parsing code anyway )

8 Dec 2007, 09:52 PM	#13
brong The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,696 Representative of: Fastmail.fm	Oh, and a discussion of the exact preferred interface would be great too - I know this one sucks a bit. The library I've written for stripping attachments sanely has an interface like this: StripAttachments($InFh, $OutFh, $DecideProc); Where $DecideProc is a function which gets the following information: $PartNum, $Headers $PartNum => (e.g. 1.2, 2, 4.2.3.1, depending how deeply MIME Nested we are) $Headers => The MIME headers for this part (Content-Type, Content-Disposition, etc) It can return either "keep" or "delete". The current one returns 'keep' if $PartNum is blank (top level message) or if $Headers{'content-type'} matches 'text/'. Because we have PartNum, it is possible to use checkboxes to only allow removal of single attachments rather than all - but that's not really compatible with a feature that allows checking multiple messages and stripping all the attachments in one go. Over to you! Bron.