Hi,
I see this was discussed in an old list back in 2003, but I don't think the current facility is right.  Users of the popular commercial mail (pim) software are used to being able to delete attachments from their mail store.  Evolution mailer allows me to delete the whole email, or keep all of it.  An attachment can presumably be removed by going into the hidden files with a text editor, but for ordinary users that is out of the question.

Suppose you have a chain of email correspondence you want to keep.  Your correspondent sends you an important email that needs to remain part of the chain.  They also send, in that same email, 10MB of photos.  You save them (out) with all your other photos.  You don't need the photos in your email store any more, but you need the email.  Suddenly the photos in your email store are larger than your entire text based correspondence over the whole year.

This "can't-detach attachments set-up" may work for some users and corporates but not for everyone surely.  And since users of other software can do this in both private and commercial contexts, it would seem sensible for Evolution to offer it too.  It could have an on/off toggle somewhere that superusers can switch off if necessary for the corporate clients.

Thanks
Jacek