Gmail Attachment Gets Stuck Scanning For Virus

December 26, 2008

I’ve been having trouble with Gmail for my domain getting stuck scanning for viruses on my attachments, which means I can’t download them, which is annoying.

I got fed up with waiting for Gmail, so I just got them through the old fashioned means.

Here’s how…


Attachment is stuck…


View the original message…


What that looks like (click image for bigger view)


Find the base64 encoded contents of your attachment (click image for bigger view)

Then you just copy and paste that into a file and run it through base64, a la $ base64 -d getImage.raw > getImage.php

Categories: Geek
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Comments

  1. Alon says:

    I have this problem often and found an easier (though weird) workaround – I forward the mail to myself with the attachment, and then open the forwarded massage, and then the scanning works much faster!:) Don’t ask me why..

  2. john says:

    Nice! Thanks for the tip!

  3. Dan says:

    You can use a site like base64converter.com to paste and decode the base64 string as well.

  4. Patti says:

    The easiest way is simply to go back to the main email list and then open it right back up again. Works every time for me.

  5. Kerry says:

    I don’t know why, but refreshing the page makes the attachment available. Stupid that we have to do a workaround on such a basic, known issue.

  6. Alvi says:

    I deleted unwanted downloaded attachments and the download link came back.

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