You can save your email attachments to iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and more!
You receive an email with a file attached to it, maybe a spreadsheet or presentation, a PDF or plain text. You don't just want to open it in an app, though. You want to save it somewhere you can remember and get to whenever you need to, and from any of your devices. That's where attachment saving comes in. With it, you can save any attachment you receive to any online storage service you use, including iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. Then, you can access whenever you want, from wherever you want.
- How to save email attachments to iCloud on iPhone and iPad
- How to save email attachments to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or enterprise storage on iPhone or iPad
How to save email attachments to iCloud on iPhone and iPad
Saving email attachments to iCloud Drive is easy because iCloud built right into iOS.
- Launch Mail from your Home screen.
- Open the email that contains the attachment.
- Long press on the attachment to bring up the Share sheet.
Tap on Save Attachment.
Note: In iOS 10, tap on Add to iCloud Drive.
- Tap on the folder you want to save the file into.
Tap on Move to this location at the bottom to save the file.
Yeah, the language is precise given the mechanics of what it's doing, but it's not intuitive. Just know that, once you're done, the file will be saved in that location and accessible from all your iCloud devices.
How to save email attachments to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or enterprise storage on iPhone or iPad
Thanks to document provider extensions, though, you can also save to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and other storage services.
To save attachments to you storage provider, you first have to download the host app from the App Store.
Once you've downloaded the app, launch it and log into your account. Then you can start saving away. How you do it can vary by provider, however.
- Launch Mail from your Home screen.
- Open the email that contains the attachment.
- Long press on the attachment to bring up the Share sheet.
- Tap on your storage provider, if they have a custom saving extension. For example, tap Save to Dropbox.
- Tap Save to save the file to the top level.
- Or, tap Choose a Different Folder to select a a sub-directory for the file, and then tap Save.
- Tap Save Attachment if your storage provider doesn't have their own saving extension. For example, Google Docs.
- Tap Locations,
- Tap on your storage provider, For example, Google Drive.
- Choose your account, if prompted.
- Tap on the folder you want to save the file into, if it's not at the top level.
- Tap Save Here or whatever language your storage provider uses.
Yeah, it's messier. Dropbox is using a custom extension to provide a faster, better experience, while Google Drive and others are simply letting iOS link in.
Either way, once you get used to how your storage provider works, it's relatively simple and fast to do.
Not sure how to add attachments? Find out here!
Reader comments
How to save attachments in Mail for iPhone and iPad
Wow this is really a feature only being added just now? 0_o
Previously tapping them would open them in an app where you could store them. Now you can save them directly to iCloud (or any storage provider) from Mail, if you prefer.
And it's so complicated to do it in iOS. I can do that in my Galaxy S6 (Same for Lumia 920) by just saving the attachment and the document will Always appear in my Download folder for my expense, just as I expected...
To be fair this is more something that hasn't been implemented sooner due to iOS's lack of being able to access the filesystem. It is examples like this where you realize how not being able to access the filesystem (or a section of the filesystem) causes a lot of issues. If you want to "save files on iOS", you basically resort to a cloud system, that's it
It only took 7 years for iPhone to add the biggest thing I missed about my blackberry. Email attachments. I no longer have to jump through hoops, stand on one leg, juggle 5 balls, just attach, right from the mail app. What a concept!
Being able to save attachments to iCloud is new in iOS 9, but not new for Dropbox and so forth.
Today I tried saving a text attachment to Notes, 'creating a New Note.' It created the new note, but left it blank. I had to scroll past that to 'copy to iA Writer' before it would actually transfer the text. From there I was able to copy the text and paste it into the 'New Note' that was created earlier.
Just what is that 'share with Notes' option for?
I was trying to store an apple mail with attachments on OneDrive, it didn't work. It said "Sorry there was a problem. It may have to do with file".
It work for Google Drive and iCloud.
Mike
OneDrive doesn't work great, I'd stick with iCloud/Google Drive/Dropbox
Why can't I save a pdf email attachment to iCloud drive from my iPhone?
Thanks for the article. Netflix, Hulu and BBC App is great on iPad. If live outside USA, you can use tools like UnoTelly to getNetflix, Hulu and BBC on your iPad.
Coming from Nexus phones/tablets, I have a question... When you just view an email attachment (which opens it in whatever app it needs, right?), it's downloaded to the device, right? Just like when you are on a web page and you click on a PDF, that PDF is downloaded so that you can view it, right?
...So where on earth are these files that were downloaded?
I have run into several occasions on my iPhone where I view an event's schedule PDF or something from a web link and then I go looking for it later, only to find that I can't find it, but I know it's on my device somewhere!
Not exactly. Technically, any time you visit a website on any device, everything on the website is downloaded to your computer, usually for caching purposes. This is sent to a "temp/cache" folder, of which the data in this folder can be automatically deleted at any time. Usually on modern desktop operating systems now, viewing a PDF in your browser won't automatically download it, it will view it in the browser, and just stored in the cache which is hard to access, but you can usually download the PDF via a button or by saving the page.
On iOS PDFs open in the browser, you should be given the option to save them at the top right when you view the PDF. It might save it to iBooks, but it'll tell you where it saves to, although if you didn't click a button to save, then you will have to look in your history
Ah - so just cached and soon deleted then. That makes sense!