Gmail attachments: Big game hunting
This was becoming an issue as I keep a local backup of my Gmail account using IMAP Backup. And while you can find attachments in Gmail using search modifiers has:attachment and filename:zip, you can’t search or sort on attachment size.
The solution: the IMAPsize freeware Windows IMAP utility found via this blog post from Amit Agarwal. IMAPsize’s speciality is searching your Gmail account for folders (Gmail labels) and messages based on attachment size.
I quickly found and deleted my large attachments using IMAPsize. Backup problem solved. Recommended.
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One comment so far
carrt7
September 28th 2011 at 14:01
It doesn’t seem possible, using IMAPSize, to save attachments locally AND delete the original attachments at the same time? This causes a problem.
I select a bunch of messages with large attachments, and ask IMAPSize to copy the attachments locally (to my HDD). It usually ends by saying something like “Finished: Errors – 4 files not copied”.
If I now select the same bunch of messages and tell IMAPSize to “Delete Attachments”, I will lose the ones it failed to save. But I have no way of knowing which ones they were!