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text (in mail) cut off after an attachment

hi,

i use an exchange mail account and just realized, that if i put an attachment into a mail and send it out, all text after the attachment is cut off. while the "full" email appears in my sent box, recipients do not receive any text beyond the attachment. this is reproduceable on recipients using macs as well as PCs.

any idea how i can solve this issue?

thanks,
+b

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on May 14, 2009 5:10 AM

Reply
15 replies

May 14, 2009 5:28 AM in response to CaptainMarvel

I get it when sending from Mail to Outlook. In fact the diffrence with me it would seem is;
The recipient on the outlook end receives all of the text before the attachment as normal, then the attachment, and then another attachment that seems to be a text file with the balance of the text that was originally after the attachment in the original mail.

Jun 24, 2009 7:04 AM in response to CaptainMarvel

I have had this bug too since I bought my first MacBook Pro in February 2009. I hope all of you are submitting this as a bug report at http://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html

Out of interest do any of you have any Mail plugins? I use a few such as Letter Opener and WideMail.

I find it hard to believe Apple could have such a bug and not fix it, or perhaps blame it on other mail programs.

I think the only workaround for now is to always place attachments at the footer of every email you send sigh.

Jun 24, 2009 7:05 AM in response to AppleIIme

Apple Engineering has confirmed that this is a problem with Exchange. Exchange rewrites the message and adds instructions telling the email app to display all the text except the first part as attachments. This would have to be fixed in Exchange, not Mail.

The workaround is to make sure to put all your attachments at the end of the message with no text after them. The Edit -> Attachments -> Always Insert Attachments at End of Message menu item will cause Mail to do this for you.

Regards.

Jun 24, 2009 7:12 AM in response to varjak paw

Sorry, I don't buy that. Apple are well known for blaming other companies for such incompatibilities, yet how strange that it only happens with Apple Mail. Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo, Hotmail, Eudora, all seem quite capable of 'working around' any apparent problem in Exchange... but Apple are too proud to do the same. End result, Apple customers angry at Apple.

Sorry but Apple need to adjust their software to resolve this incompatibility, beyond just allowing Mail to always insert attachments at the end. If they have a feature to insert attachments within the body, it should work no matter who you send it to.

Jun 24, 2009 7:24 AM in response to AppleIIme

I don't believe that any of the applications/services you mention allow attachments to be placed anywhere in the body of the email; they all, to the best of my knowledge, put the attachments at the end. Mail is the only application I know of on a Mac that allows attachments anywhere in the body of the email, so it's only Mail where the problem comes up.

If they have a feature to insert attachments within the body, it should work no matter who you send it to.

That would be a fine philosophy if every email server conformed to the same specifications, but Microsoft unfortunately takes their own road to things as they often do. The solution is just to set Mail to put attachments at the end of the message as just about every other email application does by default with no option otherwise. I for one prefer to have the option rather than just having Mail put attachments at the end by default, but if you would prefer Apple to remove that option, you can suggest it here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Jul 27, 2009 1:42 PM in response to CaptainMarvel

This is really aggravating, and putting all the attachments at the end is worse.

I believe Outlook can embed charts w/in the text flow and send to other outlook users, why can't Mac Mail also send something Outlook users can read?

This got me in big trouble w/ my boss. I had sent something to him where outlook had wrapped my text into an html attachment... so he didn't see it, and I thought he had... big miscommunication.

Aug 4, 2009 9:16 PM in response to varjak paw

Thanks, Dave. That will work for me. Others may have problems with it, but being a recent convert from Windows and Outlook/Exchange, I am used to attachments being placed at the bottom of a document and in the "attachments" section. Since the Attachment count is listed in the email header in Apple Mail, I am comfortable with this for now. Much better than me dragging the attachments to the end. Five attempts today to send a 10Mb powerpoint file not understanding why all of my comments were missing until I realized that the signature and original message were missing also.

Aug 5, 2009 4:57 AM in response to CaptainMarvel

Really useful to see I'm not alone. This has caused me some serious miscommunications with clients, and initally I blamed them for the problem. I now have to go back through hundreds of past emails and check I haven't put any critical information after I've added an attachment. If not, at least I will only look like I've been curt and unpolite in not signing off my mails.

I've submitted a bug report suggesting as others do on the forum that Apple are at fault here for creating an email format that can't be read properly, and that they should allow at least an option to have the attachments added at the end by default. This would not only now make life simpler for me but also reduce capacity for further errors.

In short, I'm furious that this has happened, and that it took so long for me to pick up on.

Aug 18, 2009 8:41 AM in response to blackburried

I hate to say it, but Apple needs to bow to M$'s monopoly on this one, and only generate HTML that Word can render (as the problem w/ Outlook's HTML rendering is that it uses Word to render).

Not only does Word screw-up embedded graphics (as this problem report details): I've been looking at the mess my customers read when I send embedded comments in email; the "quote levels" looks wonderfully readable as sent... but, looks like garbage when read by Outlook users. I've taken to sending a copy of my replies in PDF, so at least customers can get a hint of what I tried to send.

I realize that Microsoft uses this strategy of making only Word-rendered HTML Outlook-renderable in order to leverage their monopoly in Office into an Exchange/Outlook monopoly.

And such monopoly leveraging was illegal before the Bush administration made a farce of the M$ conviction. If Apple wants to take them to court to get HTML-rendering standardized in Outlook, I'm all for it.

But, until then, Apple needs to focus on making the HTML mail sent renderable by Word/Outlook!

text (in mail) cut off after an attachment

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