Mail deletes attachments in some emails coming in, leaving the name of the file enclosed within 's

Question

I received an email with an attachment, read the attachment once, and when I went to re-read it, it had been enclosed in <>'s and was no longer open-able.

Answer 1

Eric Andrist wrote:
I sent you a copy of the email yesterday, but have not heard back.
Sorry about that. It was in my spam box.
There is nothing wrong with your message. It shows up fine in Apple Mail.
I think all you need to do is rebuild your mailbox. (Apple Mail, Mailbox menu > Rebuild)
The message you sent me was a Rich Text message. Due to the way e-mail works, Rich Text messages actually have one or more attachments. All e-mail programs work this way. The smarter e-mail programs, such as Apple Mail, will see that attachment and recognize that it isn't really an attachment, but rather a fancier version of the message. Then it will display the fancy message instead of the plain one.
Due to the way e-mail servers are designed, there can sometimes be a slight disconnect while the message is being downloaded. That could cause the message index to show that the message has an attachment while the message itself says there isn't one. There is an attachment, it is just being display inline, in the message, instead of the plain-old text. Certainly the idea was to reduce user confusion - not 100% successful.