[FIX] Anti-Virus warning – Downloading Attachments Disabled in Gmail

Many users are facing this issue after Google made changes to their attachment policy, making it more restrictive which can result in past attachments to no be no longer available for download. The reason is to prevent accidentally downloading malicious files on the system.

Usually, the Email messages that have a Zip file as attachment or documents with malicious macros get blocked. However, sometimes the files are not actually harmful and Google still filters these out which prevents the user to download the attachment.

Method 1: Send the Email in Spam Folder

Sometimes this problem can occur if you use the “Move To” option to move the Email from the Spam Folder to your Inbox instead of using the “Not Spam” button. This means you have bypassed a Gmail Internal Flag that marks the Email as Not Spam and allows the user to download the attachment. You can fix this issue by simply moving the Email back to the Spam Folder and perform the following steps:

1. First, open the Email and use the “Move To” option to send it back to Spam folder

   

2. Mark the Email as “Not Spam”
3. Go to the Spam folder and open that email and click on the “Not Spam” button at the top.
4. Save changes and check if you can view the attachments.

Method 2: Download the Email and Use an Email Client

In this method we use the Email Client to open the Email and then save the attachment on the system. For this method to work you need to have a Desktop Email Client installed on your system. Email Clients give you a more “Desktop-Like” experience and get the Gmail messages delivered directly on your system rather than Gmail Server.

However you don’t need to connect your Email Client to the Gmail for this method, you only need to have it installed on your system. There are many Email Clients available like Outlook, Thunderbird, and  Mailbird. You may use any of those.

1. Open the Email client and click the three dots on the top-right corner and click “Show Original”

   

2. The Email will open up in a new tab, now click on the “Download Original”  button.

   

3. Give it a name and save the file as “E-Mail Message”

   

4. Now open this saved file using the Email Client you have installed on your system, in this case, it is Outlook

   

5. You can see that the Email also contains the attached files from the original Email. Click on “Save All Attachments” options and choose where you want to save these attachments.