The Gmail app for Google Android is pretty awesome… most of the time. It makes it easy to read, sort, search, and respond to email on the go, while providing you real-time notifications when new messages come in. But there’s one thing that you can’t do when using the native Gmail app on Android: download file attachments. For some reason all you get is a preview button for opening attachments in Quickoffice or other office software installed on your phone.
Fortunately there’s a third party app that does let you download file attachments to your SD card so you can view them when you’re offline or when you just don’t want to open the Gmail app. It’s called Save my Attach and it’s available as a free download from the Android Market.
Once you’ve installed Save my Attach, you can just click the preview button on any Gmail message with an attachment and you should see the Save option. Just tap it and then select the location where you’d like to store your downloaded file and you’re all done.
Save my Attach will also work with Android’s Email app if you use a service other than Gmail. Instead of clicking preview, you hit the Open button in that app.
via reddit