Quick Look copies attachments to Mail Downloads folder!

Holy maloly, I just discovered why my MacBook Pro was slowly losing disk space! Every time I use Quick Look to check an attachment in Mail, a copy of the attachment is placed in the Mail Downloads folder of my user Library. My writing work entails quickly looking at lots of very large attachments and e-mailing estimates to clients. Quick Look has been a great time saver for this. Nice being able to stay in Mail and not have to open Word to examine the job. But I don't need all these additional copies taking up space on my hard drive. As far as I know, Mail is the only program that does this.
Is there any way of telling Quick Look to NOT make copies of Mail attachments?
Thanks!

Hi,
Attachments to messages are actually stored in the mailbox along with the message text. It is when an attachment must be opened with another application, such as a Word document with Word, that the attachment is also placed in the Mail Downloads folder. There it can be used and edited by the application used to open it, and from there can be returned as edited to the sender or to others.
There is no reason files must permanently stay, but if you edit or otherwise alter files that have been attached, then you must elect some place to keep them for your own use.
You will note that in the Mail Preferences/General there is also a selection regarding when to remove files from Downloads folder if not edited. Any file that is not edited need not remain in the Downloads folder since it already exists in the mailbox with the message it came attached to.
Image files, since they can be opened directly in the Mail window, by Mail, do not go into the Downloads folder, but if any were opened from the message, with say, Photoshop, then that image file would also be sent to the Downloads, temporarily.
Ernie

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