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Sane Attachments via Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Evernote or OneDrive

What is it?

Large attachments can be a pain in your email account. They can fill up your email quota as well as take a while to download and forward. To alleviate this issue, SaneBox has created Sane Attachments. This feature uses your choice of either Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, OneDrive or Evernote.

What services do you support?

Here’s a look at the settings you’ll see for your choice of cloud storage services we support.

How do I turn it on?

  1. Click on either the Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Evernote or OneDrive icon on the SaneAttachments section under Settings (from the Menu) on your SaneBox Dashboard.
  2. You will be directed to login and authorize SaneBox to access the storage account of your choosing.
  3. Once authorized, you will be directed back to your SaneBox Dashboard.

Note: You can activate each email account registered with SaneBox with a separate cloud storage service.

Will you upload old attachments?

This feature will only work for new attachments sent to you after SaneAttachments has been turned on. SaneBox processing does not go back retroactively for processing of email attachments to be saved in your selected cloud storage account. Upload processing of your attachments begins with new inbound Inbox arrivals that occur after SaneAttachments is turned on in your SaneBox account.

Note While SaneBox doesn’t go back and retroactively process emails for attachments, if those old emails show back up in your Inbox or your Sane folders, SaneAttachments will then process the emails as if it were a new email and strip the attachment.

How do I pause processing or turn it off?

In case you need to temporarily turn the SaneAttachments feature off, the service feature simply toggles with a click or tap on the built in button.

Can I choose which Sane folders upload attachments?

Yes! You can select which of your Sane folders upload attachments in the Upload section of your SaneAttachments settings.

Description of Configuration Options

Add links to email: If you choose to add links to the email, a link to the attachment(s) will be added to the email along with directions for finding the file in your local Dropbox, Google Drive, Box or Evernote. Since anybody with whom you share the link will have access, please guard these links with the same care that you would guard the original attachment.

Location of links: Choose whether you want the cloud storage account link for each attachment to be placed at the top or the bottom of the emails with attachments that are being processed by SaneBox.

Permission to Share is a highly requested settings option that’s now available: Use the radio-button dot to select and choose not to allow your attachments to be “public” and accessible by anyone who has the share link.

Save copy of original email: If the original email has been changed by SaneBox SaneAttachments processing:

  • either by adding a cloud file storage link for a processed attachment,
  • or by removing the attachments after placing them in your cloud storage,

Depending on your choice here, a copy of the original email without any changes will be placed either in your Trash folder or into your @SaneOldAttachment folder (This extra folder is generated if needed). You may delete this copy of the email whenever, if you want to.

The “Save copy of original email” pull-down menu controls when we clean out your @SaneOldAttachment folder. If you choose, Save copy of original email “Never”, which is the default, you will not receive a SaneOldAttachment folder and your comparison copy will be put immediately into your Trash folder.

Only attachments larger than: By default, Sane Attachments will process emails that are larger than 256 KB, but you can use this drop-down menu to designate up to a 9 MB threshold.

Saved filename format: This menu lets you choose the format for the attachments added to your cloud storage account. There are 6 options to choose from. Please be extra careful with use of the Flat Dedup or Super Dedup options. If there are multiple attachments in the emails you are receiving (files with the same name and from the same sender) and you have selected either Flat Dedup or Super Dedup, SaneBox will automatically replace the older file (in your cloud storage) with the newer one.

And don’t worry, even when set so your cloud-stored file links can be used by anyone, no one else will be able to find your attachments unless they are given the link. SaneBox systems put the files into your private Dropbox / Google Drive / Box / Evernote folder.

Note: “The OneDrive for Business” feature of Office 365 is fundamentally different from the consumer-level OneDrive. For the forseeable future, OneDrive for Business may remain incompatible with SaneBox. This is due to coding limitations created by Microsoft.

Note for Active Sync Users:

If you are using ActiveSync for the email server you gave SaneBox to use to talk to your email account: we will be able to upload the attachments for you, but at the moment we are unable to alter the original email to include a link. (This is Due to the nature of the ActiveSync email protocol.)

When an email cannot be Stripped

We should still upload the attachment but it depends on the email client creating the email and the content of the email, whether we can safely change the original email. If we are unable to change the original email, we’ll upload your attachment but you may receive a message from us (as seen below) stating that we were unable to strip it from the original email.

Not_all_files_removed.png

Why does SaneBox attach a tiny SaneBox icon file to the email messages processed by SaneAttachments?

(Note: This occurs both after copying attached files to the cloud and either; stripping the original attachment, or when leaving an attachment in place as conditions require. )

We attach the icon logo to the email so that you can still search in your email client app or webmail interface for emails with attachments even after we have removed all the attachments from the email. Over the years, we’ve found that this is a convenience when you go looking for something. And since the logo added is so small it doesn’t add to any quota issues.

More about why some attachments are left in place

Sometimes, an attachment is embedded in the email in such a way that removing it may run a risk of making the email unreadable. So, we err on the side of caution and don’t remove it in those circumstances. But, in general, we can always upload attachments even from those emails where the attachment can’t be removed. So you can count on the cloud storage file being there.

What about iCloud?

We don’t include iCloud Drive because they don’t provide access to services like ours.