attachmentsemailgmailmail.app
I was trying to clear up space on my HD by running "Remove Attachments" in Mail.app on my Gmail accounts.
Too late I realized this deleted the attachments from server (Gmail) as well. They all show "[The attachment ___ has been manually removed]".
Now I see I should have just deleted locally from my HD, but is there any way to recover these attachments? Are they still on Gmail somewhere?
You will want to make a new mailbox with storage only on the Mac or use the Archive function in Mail to archive an entire folder/mailbox.
The built in help will guide you through the Archive path.
I just make folders "On My Mac" with the year, and then make Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 folders inside to keep each relatively small - you might only need one folder per year or one folder.
Once you move the message and are comfortable that it's on your mac with attachments intact, delete the original message from IMAP and your quotas will be happier.
I had a similar problem in Mail on Mountain Lion, where attachments did not show up for a message. When looking at the raw source (⌘⎇U) of the message, I also found that headers of the message were missing.
I managed to fix the issue by selecting the mailbox containing the broken email, and then using the "Rebuild" command from the "Mailbox" menu. After a short time, my emails reappeared, complete with attachments.
Best Answer
I have just accidentally "manually removed attachments" from Mac mail and because I had opened them first (word documents) I was able to open Word and go to "open recent" and they did open and I was able to save them properly. Just as well because I had been unable to find them in the files that were modified today.