iPad Email Attachments showing up as empty/missing icon question mark

I have set a few iPads up for clients and they love them. However, they have come to me with the issue of being unable to forward pdf and basic image files. Email is run through and exchange server.

When emails with PDFs are received on an iPad they can be viewed but when they are forwarded the attachments do not show up for the new recipients. This is a big problem because it eliminates one of the primary functions of the device. Stanza reader is not installed on a single one of the iPads and never was installed, so it can not be the problem. I have not seen this problem on other devices yet, just the 3G iPads I provided for clients. I would greatly appreciate some advice that does not involve removing stanza.

As other Users have said, the attachments on the iPad show up as rendered images inside the email even though stanza is not installed. Additionally when they are forwarded the recipients see them as small question marks at the bottom of the page. Are there any other programs that may cause this problem? Perhaps Quickoffice? This is installed on both of the clients iPads. Does anyone else with these problems have it installed? Or is this an Apple mail issue?

I am having the same problem. When I send a PDF to the iPad sometimes it will show as a downloadable link and other times I get the paper clip icon showing that I have an attachment but no DL link. I can open the same email in Goodreader and the PDF will download and is viewable.

I can also check the same email on my desktop and the PDF is there. I haven't been able to figure out why some emails work correctly and others don't.

I hope there is a fix coming soon for this problem.

I am having the same problem. Can't forward any type picture in e-mails. Recipient
gets message that no previewer is available to open this file. This only occurs when forwarding e-mails from the ipad.

Someone please help. This was the primary reason I purchased this for my wife. As of now she can't share (forward pictures contained in e-mails) with her friends.

We have observed this same issue and searched via Google to arrive at this topic's thread.

One of my users in our business has a routine inability to forward attachments from Mail on iPad due to this bug.

I think this issue should have been resolved by now but it hasn't. It happens not only with attachments but plain old text as well. New emails sometimes will show the Subject with a blank body. Resetting the iPhone works but when you have lots of incoming emails it is a major problem. When will you fix this Apple? It's clearly a software bug.

Hello all. The majority of this post relates to PDF docs. In my scenario it is images, power point presentations, almost any type of attachments. Issue is that it does not do it all the time. Email account has been set up as pop and currently as imap. Provider is yahoo and the account has been set up using the easy set up provided by apple. The majority of emails being sent are jokes and do include embedded images or attachments. All are viewed prior to sending so they would therefore have been downloaded. Have turned on load remote images. I cannot determine what it is. Sometimes it does function properly, other times it does not. Tested with receiver being pc user, Mac user. Has even failed sending it back to myself on the same iPad.

It looks like the problem of incomplete attachments received in iPad Mail is still with us. I'm seeing the question mark box whenever someone sends me a jpg attachment. Yet the same message plays out correctly on my iPhone. I'm running 3.2.2. on the iPad. Was this problem ever solved in the past? Most of the posts here are from six months ago. Bob

As of this morning, my problem seems resolved. My iPad is now happily displaying .jpg images. Yet, I have not sync'ed this device since reporting my problem. Could Apple have changed its .me mail server? Or, was I missing something obvious in the way attachments are downloaded? Anyway, if you've experienced this problem, I encourage you to revisit the issue.

A Happy Bob

I'm also having this problem with Pdf attachments not showing up. It is fine with .jpg, .gif, image attachments though. I don't have Stanza installed. Hopefully Apple fixes this thing as it is a Major pain for Mail users.

Question mark has taken the place of the attachment for me, as of today, on my iPad, when I try to attach a photo to a mobile.me email. This is the second major bug concerning attachments, the other being the elusive "Done" button.

I have had this occur, as well, but I've isolated it generally to complex PDFs, hi-res PDF's (i.e. 150 ppi), large size PDF's, CMYK PDF's, and PDF's created on old versions of some software. If they can be opened on my iPhone but not my iPad, then I resent to myself via iPhone and then it displays OK on my iPad.

Before forwarding, scroll to the bottom and be sure you have downloaded the full attachment.

You must scroll to the bottom before forwarding and "download the full attachment."

What I have noticed is that for example you receive an email with more than 10MB in attachments, let's say .jpg files, the first 10MB of attachments will load and display, regardless the order you tap on them.
After the 10MB limit, only text showing what seems to be a system shortcut to the file shows up.

This problem existed in iOS 3.2.x and still continues in 4.2.1.

It clearly seems to be an iOS bug.

I have just updated to 4.2.1 from 3.2 and the problem still exists. Whenever I try to send attachments, be they photos from the photos app, PDFs via forwarding, photos via forwarding, my e-mails show up with nothing attached for the recipients. This is ridiculously stupid since this doesn't happen with my iPhone.