3.6.1.1   Importing Attachments From Apple Mail

When importing mail from Apple Mail, EagleFiler tries to import complete messages, including any attached files. For messages downloaded from POP mail servers or stored in local (On My Mac) mailboxes, this should always succeed because Mail stores the attachment data with the message. For messages from IMAP and Exchange mail servers, the attachment data may or may not have been downloaded to your Mac.

You can tell Mail that you want it to download the attachments to your Mac:

1. Go to the Accounts pane of Mail’s settings and (for each account), on the Account Information tab, for Download Attachments choose All.
2. Do not use the Optimize Storage OS feature to automatically remove e-mail attachments.

Note that this is advisory, and Mail may not always store all the attachments on your Mac, especially if disk space is running low.

If you try to import a message whose attachments have not been downloaded, EagleFiler will report a Missing Apple Mail Attachment error and import only the non-attachments parts of the message. This is good because it alerts you to a message that needs to be fully downloaded. After following the Missing Apple Mail Messages and Attachments instructions to download the message, you can try the import again. Then you’ll end up with a complete offline copy of the message, whereas a Time Machine backup would only contain the parts of the message that Mail was currently caching.