It could also be kind of risky. Suppose you forgot about that 2000 page PDF someone sent.
And of course, some attachments simply aren’t printable, e.g., audio, video, custom formatted files.
I frequently have the need for this, not necessarily to print onto paper but to have everything in sequential order w/attachments; I’m fine w/it remaining on my computer but I want to scroll thru everything in order. The only way I’ve found to do it, & it’s very laborious, is to keep creating pdf documents - for each email & all attachments - & adding the pages into 1 larger document w/all emails & attachments in their original order. If you only have a few emails & attachments, it’s not a big deal. But many emails & many attachments does become cumbersome.
I had a problem w/my condo association (eventually had to get an attorney involved). I kept the emails in Mail but I wanted all emails & attachments together in one document to read thru easily, made it much easier for the attorney to see what steps I’d already gone thru. Ended up w/well over 100 pages (probably over 200 pages) & took time & concentration but I did it. Would love to find an easier way.
One method of backing up that I’ve become a fan of is using a Synology to handle it.
Now there are some requirements (, and I’ve not looked into other options so extensively, but:
IF you have a domain hosted with Google or Microsoft 365 a DS+ unit can run the Active Backup app to make ongoing backups automatically. It catches everything, adds backups to associated OneDrive or Google Drive and runs independently of your other backups. You can also restore back to the accounts (so you can restore for people who aren’t local). But you can use the Synology for other data storage and backups as well. Easy to use, through, and pretty much set-and-forget.
I think the main need is to Print to PDF rather than paper so a large attachment could be a surprise but not a waste of paper.