(If you're a Microsoft 365 subscriber with semi-annual updates, under Offline Settings, check Use Cached Exchange Mode to download email to an Outlook data file.

Under Offline Settings, check Use Cached Exchange Mode. accounts default to Cached Exchange Mode and cannot be changed.Ĭlick File > Account Settings > Account Settings.Ĭlick the Exchange or Microsoft 365, and then click Change. We recommend always using Cached Exchange Mode with an Exchange or Microsoft 365 account. And for more, you can check out these 30 tips to free storage space on your Mac.Cached Exchange Mode is the default when you add an Exchange or Microsoft 365 account. If you receive a lot of emails, making this little change can save you gigabytes of storage space over the years. The difference is that if you select None, these attachments will not be automatically downloaded to your Mac but will instead reside on the Mail server. Now, of course, when you receive emails containing attachments, these files will still be showing in the Mail app. When you select None, Mail doesn’t download any attachments at all.When you select Recent, Mail downloads only attachments received within the past 15 months.When you select All, Mail always downloads attachments that you receive.

How to disable the automatic download of attachments in the Mac Mail appĢ) In the menu bar, go to Mail > Preferences, and click the Accounts tab.ģ) Select the account for which you want to change the mail download behavior in the sidebar.Ĥ) Look for the Download Attachments option and select Recent or None from the dropdown menu. In this post, I will show you how to stop the Mail app from downloading all attachments on a Mac by simply changing a setting in Mail preferences, potentially saving tons of storage space. Thankfully, you can easily change this behavior and make sure the Mail app downloads only recent attachments or none at all.

This is, of course, a big waste of space since none of these attachments are so important that they must be downloaded locally. When setting up my wife’s new MacBook Pro, I noticed that the Mail app was not only downloading all emails from her Gmail account but also all their attachments, amounting to several gigabytes of storage space.

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