Outlook 365: message sizes not falling when attachments removed?

On 18/07/2020 20.20, Mayayana wrote:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| There's a column "Size" in the list of messages.
|
| When I remove attachments from a message, the size shown does not drop -
| even if the attachment was the bulk of the message. This seems to be
| true, even if I quit and restart Outlook, emptying the bin as I do so.
|
| In other email clients I've used, the shown size _does_ drop when I
| remove attachments. So what gives?

I haven't used O365, but a couple of thoughts:

Are you getting them via IMAP or POP3? In other
words, did you actually download it in the first place?
If so, if it's in an email program, then the attachment
is base-64 text in the body of the email. I've never
seen an email program with an option to delete the
attachment while saving the email. That would require
recreating the text/HTML section.

I know of one: Alpine, text mode client. Mark the attachment or part as deleted, then copy or move the message to another folder. The actual delete action is made during the copy (but I can copy to the same folder).

I don't remember what happens to the html part, maybe simply that it can not access the attachment. The attachment part is replaced with another text part with a notice that says the attachment was deleted. Example:


++----------
[ Part 1.1.2: "Attached Text" ]

[ The following attachment was DELETED when this message was saved: ]
[ A Image/PNG (Name="Screenshot_2018-01-31.png") ]
----------++-

actually:

--------------80DD8036755625F415DAD740
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=UTF-8
X-Content-Type: image/png;
name="Screenshot_2018-01-31.png"
X-Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
X-Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="Screenshot_2018-01-31.png"

[ The following attachment was DELETED when this message was saved: ]
[ A Image/PNG (Name="Screenshot_2018-01-31L.png") ]
--------------80DD8036755625F415DAD740--





In OE and TBird, as far as I know, the size will not
be reclaimed when deleting an entire email until the
folder is compacted.

I was going to mention that :-)

--
Cheers, Carlos.