>>I have 13,795 items in my Attachments folders, going back to 2003. I'm >>convinced that many of them are orphans. I wish there was a way to clean >>them out. > >I wonder if there's a way to identify orphans? > >Anyone know of one? Perhaps CTM has a suggestion?
Is there is any technical problem to putting all the attachments for each message in its own folder? Name the folder with some combination of message subject and date/timestamp received. This would prevent the need to rename attachments. If you find what you think is an orphaned attachment set, you have a clue to what the original message is, and if it's junk you can be rid of it all by deleting just one folder. Can metadata be set in the Finder on that folder in such a way that Spotlight will see that it is attached to a particular PowerMail message? Could FoxTrot use this kind of logic (maybe it does)? Here's another idea that perhaps could be done if attachments were stored in folders: an AppleScript that goes through your messages and finds the corresponding folder of its attachments and sets the Finder label to what you choose. Then you know which folders are orphaned by seeing which ones are not labeled. If one actually uses Finder labels for some other purpose here, "do not change label if already labeled" criterion, etc. Hrm. 13.932 items in my Attachments folder. That's quite a spin of the ol' beachball to see the list in the Finder. I can't imagine an Attachments folder with fewer folders (than that number of files) would be worse. Chris --
