Detach Attachments

Detach Attachments removes attachments from emails and stores them in a subdirectory of the file system (e.g. on the C: drive) rather than inside your Outlook mailbox, or PST file. The advantages are:

• Your Outlook mailbox (PST file) is smaller, and therefore easier to backup
• Outlook is faster, as it has less data to go through
• Outlook is more reliable, as it tends to crash as the mailbox gets close to its maximum size of 2 GB
• The detached files can be easily backed up, searched and printed
• Duplicate files can be merged together, saving disk space.
• Detached files can be compressed, further saving disk space.

You can detach attachments in a number of ways:

1. When an email is open, click the DetachPipe toolbar button\Detach   OR
2. Select a group of emails in a folder, and click the DetachPipe toolbar button\Detach   OR
3. To detach from a set of folders, click the DetachPipe toolbar button\Process a set of folders.

Figure 1. Detach settings

Once saved to disk in the location determined by the filename placeholders, DetachPipe removes the attachments from the emails and replaces them with a hyperlink in the body of the email. Clicking the hyperlink opens the file. If an email ends up with no attachments, DetachPipe can optionally add a dummy attachment (Retain attachment icon on emails) so the emails retains its 'paperclip' icon in search results - making it easy to see which emails have or had attachments.

When saving the file, DetachPipe sets the time and date of the new file to the date/time of the source email and compresses the file if required to save disk space (Compress attachments). DetachPipe also checks for identical attachments in the same folder. If it finds any it points all attachments to the same copy of the file, saving even more disk space.

Mask for generating the attachment name and subfolder names

The mask is used to generate a name for the attachment on disk based on the original attachment name, the email and even the folder the email is in. It can use properties of the email and attachment such as the subject line, sender, receiver, filename, extension etc. See Placeholders for more detail.

Compress attachments

When checked, attachments are compressed (using a zip-compatible format) to save disk space. Attachments that are already compressed do not get compressed again.

Retain attachment icon on emails

When checked, DetachPipe adds a a small dummy attachment so that the email still appears in Outlook email lists with an attachment icon, and can also be located in search queries based on it having an attachment. This is used when attachments are Deleted or Detached. The dummy attachment is removed on Restore, and also when an email is Forwarded.

Ignore emails smaller than

When checked, DetachPipe will first examine the email to ensure it exceeds the specified number of KB (KiloBytes) before it processes it. If it is too small it is not processed. Generally it is only large emails (200 KB or more) that make up the majority of contributions to mailbox size, so typically this is set to 200 KB.

Ignore emails younger than

When checked, DetachPipe will first examine the email date to ensure it is older than the specified number of days before it processes it. If it is too young (i.e. not old enough) it is not processed. Typically this is set to 30 days, so only files that are looked at infrequently are processed.

Ignore embedded attachments

Ignore attachments that are embedded - these are usually small icons embedded in HTML text, rather than attachments intentionally added by the sender as 'real' attachments. Embedded attachments with no file type are skipped because they cannot be successfully detached.

Confirm each action

DetachPipe will prompt you with the suggested save location before it detaches the file. You can alter the name and path, or skip the attachment completely.

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