Thunderbird saves the attachments together with the mail message which means that the mailboxes can grow rapidly if you regularly receive large attachments. This slows down Thunderbird eventually and could also pose a storage problem if you use the default profile location to store your emails.
Thunderbird offers two possibilities to handle attachments differently. The possibility would be to save the attachment and delete the attachment in the mail folder in the process or to detach it from the mail while keeping the link in the mail intact for as long as the attachment stays on the hard drive.
Both options can be accessed by right-clicking the attachment in the attachment pane which can be found below the message if that message contains at least one attachment. The user would either choose Save As, Detach or Delete from that menu. The option to to save, delete or detach all attachments is available as well.
While this is fine if you do receive attachments every know and then it becomes lots of work if you get one regularly. A way to process mail folders directly would be to use the Thunderbird add-on Attachment Extractor.
This add-on can process complete folders and save, detach or delete all attachments found inside plus auto-extract attachments from mails automatically. This is far easier and better if you have lots of mails with attachments.
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