Attachments disappear using Android "Email" App

[hardya]

I have Imap set up for the same account on thunderbird on pc and on android "Email" App on Nexus 4 Jelly Bean. I send an email from thunderbird on pc with 7 attachments. The email WITH the attachments list appears in the sent box in thunderbird on pc. The sent email also appears (WITH the attachment list) in the sent box in the "Email" App on Nexus 4.

Later on the Nexus 4 I forward the email to the same recipient with body text, "did you get my email"? Now I have two similar sent emails however on both the pc and the nexus 4 the first email now has NO attachment list and the second email has a list which includes only ONE of the original attachments!

I decide to do a test so on my Nexus 4 so I forward the second email to my gmail account. I check my gmail and the message arrives but has NO attachment list at all! Now on the nexus 4 and on Pc in thunderbird there are of course now 3 similar sent emails in the sent boxes, but NONE of them includes an attachment list or an attachment icon in the listing view.

Into the bargain in the app "Email" on Nexus 4 of the 3 sent emails, forwarded emails 2 & 3 show the beginning of the body text that I added but this text appears no where in the body of those emails!

I had thought that attached email once first sent would reside on the server and even if email clients required you to explicitly download an attachment, each email which had attachments assosiated with it would at least include the attachment list!

Does any one know what is going on here? Perhaps greater user care is required and some internal understanding but surely the apps could make this clearer. If anyone knows EXACTLY what this required understanding is or knows of a fix / work-around it would be appreciated.

Basically this behavior does not give one any confidence that an email has arrived at the recipient with the attachment list intact.

 

[Crashdamage]

Have you checked 'Download attachments' in settings?

 

[hardya]

Have you checked 'Download attachments' in settings?

(BTW It's full title says only "...via wi-fi"). It is actually unchecked. I am guessing you are going to say it should be checked. Which suggests that you are saying that to forward an email including its attachments one always has to download them from the server first.

1) Is this what you are saying?
2) Is this then just an inefficiency of the way in which IMAP works?
3) Am I right in assuming the attachments are held on the server.
4) If 1) is YES, how does this explain the end result in paragraph 2. If such was the case then I would have expected any forwarded email for which attachments had not already been downloaded, to have no mention of attachments at all!