How to block the attachment from server

[Jerry Xie]

But only download the text message. User can choose if download the
attachment or not.

The Outlook in Windows Mobile has this function. Strange Outlook on PC
don't...

 

[VanguardLH]

But only download the text message. User can choose if download the
attachment or not.

There is no file floating out somewhere in the Twilight Zone awaiting
for approval to get yanked to your computer. The attachment is *in* the
e-mail body. It is part of the e-mail, not something separate.

All e-mail gets sent as text. ALL of it. Whether you use plain text,
RTF, or HTML formatted e-mails and whether or not they have attachments,
they ALL get sent as text data. RTF uses a winmail.dat attachment to
relay the formatting information. HTML is just text where some of it is
identified as tags. Attachments are MIME parts within the body of the
e-mail. Binary files have to get encoded into a long text string which
bloats the size by 137%, or more. When you attach a file, a MIME part
gets created within the body of the e-mail where the file gets encoded
into a long text string. The e-mail client then has to decode that
block of text to recreate the attachment (if you choose to save it
separate from the e-mail).

It is not possible to see the raw source of e-mails when using Outlook.
By the time you can see any of it in Outlook, it has already been parsed
into records in its database (message store). Other e-mail clients may
let you see the raw source of an e-mail where you can see all of the
e-mail is just plain text. Encoding or tags are used (which is also
text) to denote formatting or attachments. A MIME part can have
disposition=attached or disposition=inline. There is no difference in
the content of the MIME part but the disposition informs the e-mail
client as to how it show represent that MIME block - whether as an
attachment (like a paperclip icon) or inline with the body of the
message (i.e., an image you see within the body of the e-mail).

If you retrieve the e-mail's body (and not just its headers) then you
also retrieve anything inside that body and that includes the MIME parts
that represent the attachments or inline content.

However, you can configure Outlook to only download headers. That means
YOU will have to manually mark which e-mails to download and then
manually run the option to download the marked items. The marked items
functions are in menus but you might want to add toolbar buttons for
them for ease of use.

You can also configure Outlook to only download headers for messages
that exceed some max threshold. Only e-mails that are under this size
in bytes will get both their headers and bodies download whereas e-mails
larger than this size will only have their headers downloaded (which
means you're back to doing the manually marking and manual downloading
of the marked items).

Both options to download only headers and download only is smaller than
some max size are found under:

Tools -> Send/Receive Settings -> Define Send/Receive Groups -> select
group containing the e-mail account(s) -> click Edit -> select the
account -> enable/disable the options.

Download item description only
This only downloads the headers for your messages.
Download complete item including attachments
Downloads the entire e-mail.
If you specify a max size, only the headers are downloaded for e-mails
exceeding this size.

(This is the navigation under Outlook 2002. You didn't mention WHICH
version of Outlook that you use.)

 

[Jerry Xie]

Thank you very much for the professional information!

The Outlook on Windows Mobile v5 is able to be set to download First
500/1000/5000 bytes or Entire Msg or Header Only.

As you mentioned, the e-mail is encoded in plain text, I suppose the text
body is at the head while the attachment in the end. So if possible to
download first 5kb, it will be enough to read the whole text body (that's
what I practise on the WM5).

However this function is not supported by Outlook 2003-2007 (I used 2003,
recently upgraded to 2007), so far as I know... The option of "Only download
headers" is good but not enough.

My idea is to have a addon which can read the account info and directly
access to the pop3/imap server to get the email data and save it to inbox.
Then it will be possible to do something on it.

Anyway, your information is quite valuable. Thanks!

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Thank you very much for the professional information!

The Outlook on Windows Mobile v5 is able to be set to download First
500/1000/5000 bytes or Entire Msg or Header Only.

You can configure Outlook to download headers only in the Send/Receive Group
dialogue. Press Alt-Ctrl-S, select the Send/Receive group, then click Edit.
Select the account on the left side and then select the "Download headers
only" radio button on the right side. You can't have it download a specific
number of message bytes, however.

However this function is not supported by Outlook 2003-2007 (I used 2003,
recently upgraded to 2007), so far as I know... The option of "Only download
headers" is good but not enough.

That's all you have.

My idea is to have a addon which can read the account info and directly
access to the pop3/imap server to get the email data and save it to inbox.
Then it will be possible to do something on it.

Mailwasher is what many people use.

 

[Jerry Xie]

Mailwasher is good! I can see it has a preview window which can display the
mail text without downloading the attachment. Better if there is a outlook
add-on which has the same function.

Thank you for the recommendation!

 

[VanguardLH]

Mailwasher is good! I can see it has a preview window which can display the
mail text without downloading the attachment. Better if there is a outlook
add-on which has the same function.

Thank you for the recommendation!

The free version of Mailwasher only supports 1 e-mail account. If you
have more than 1 account that you want to monitor using MailWasher,
you'll have to pay for it. I also recall that in the free version the
public blacklists feature was unusable (which identify spam sources but
for which Mailwasher doesn't remunerate for their services despite there
is revenue from a commercial version of Mailwasher).

Mailwasher is just another e-mail client. It runs as do many other
e-mail monitors, like MagicMailMonitor or PopTray (both of which let you
define rules to act on the e-mails they see sitting in your mailbox, and
you can use regex to define much better rules and can test on ANY
header). However, instead of issuing a RETR (retrieve) command, they
issue a "TOP n" command which retrieves the headers and first n lines of
an e-mail. If you run any security software that includes anti-spam
features, they may run as an external proxy that monitors your e-mail
traffic. The use of 2 e-mail clients that end up retrieving the same
e-mail content can screw up the anti-spam program. For example, if the
anti-spam program uses a Bayes filter to weight the probability of an
e-mail being ham or spam, it seeing 2 copies of the same message (one to
the e-mail monitor and another to the e-mail program) can result in
invalid weighting of your e-mails.

Ensure that you DISABLE the option in Mailwasher to generate bogus
bounce messages to messages tagged as spam. As noted in other replies
in this discussion, the spammer can use any e-mail address they want,
including yours or anyone else's. Sending fake bounces is termed
backscatter (and it is deliberate backscatter because you know that you
cannot guarantee your fake bounces go only to the spam source). You can
get blacklisted because of your fake bounces. Anyone looking in the
headers can see you generated a fake bounce (and can report you to a
blacklist). Rejections are valid only DURING the mail session between
the sending and receiving mail hosts.

I never recommend the free version of Mailwasher. It's too crippled.
The Pro (paid) version has value but is rather pricey considering there
are free alternatives. The free version of Mailwasher is adware (aka
bannerware). For a comparison of features, see:

http://www.mailwasher.net/

Personally I'd rather keep the $40 in my pocket and use SpamPal or
another freeware program as a client-side anti-spam solution (assuming
the server-side spam filter is too weak). If all I wanted to do is
monitor the e-mails sitting up on the mail host and possibly do manual
deletions or use rules to auto-delete unwanted e-mails then I'd use an
e-mail monitor that includes rules, like Magic or PopTray. Or I can
chain my POP accounts through Gmail (using Gmail's ability to poll my
other POP accounts) to use Google's better anti-spam filter and which is
a server-side solution that does not require me to install any software
on any host. My ISP's spam filtering is quite good; however, Hotmail
still needs work, I don't monitor those accounts often, so I chain them
through Gmail. So my local e-mail client only needs to poll my ISP
accounts and my Gmail accounts (which include both Hotmail and Gmail
e-mails). Before you consider using Gmail as a server-side filter,
there is a downside: if Gmail finds no new e-mails in your account, it
increases its mail poll interval from 5 minutes to a maximum of 1 hour.
That means it could be an hour before you see e-mails from the POP
accounts that Gmail polls. Once it finds a new e-mail in those other
POP accounts, the delay interval gets reset to 5 minutes.