How to Delete Attachments from Messages in Apple Mail

Someone recently asked me “I have a malware in my MacBook that Sophos can’t deal with and supposedly, they are all in email attachments. How do I get rid of any problems.”

Here is how to get rid of just the attachments in Apple Mail.

Launch Apple Mail

Select the desired account — in the screenshot above I am selecting my Hbase account by clicking on it in the left-hand column.

Sort by Attachment — in the screenshot above I am sorting by attachment by clicking on the small paperclip icon at the top of the message area rows.

Select all the messages with attachments that you wish to get rid of and select the option under the Messages menu to ‘Remove Attachments’.

Thanks for this tip goes to MacObserver.

Getting rid of an entire Mail account

You can delete the entire account from Apple Mail by going to the Mail menu and selecting Accounts…