Email photo as attachment, not embedded, in iOS 14

Here is an email with 2 photos I sent from my iPhone to my iCloud account on my Mac. While they appear in the body of the message, there is also an icon to download the images if you hover over the address section of the message:

Further, if you click in the body of the message and Select All (CMD+A) then right-click on any image you will see a menu that includes:

Thus demonstrating that they are actual attachments that are also displayed embedded.

I took a screenshot of this thread in my iPhone and forwarded to receipts@concur.com to show you what is happening (so you don’t assume I am total moron). Low and behold, whatever the issue has been with Concur for the past week seems to have been resolved.

Hi, I tried it again today and it works ...

first test is with the signature with a photo.

test 2 is with the same photo but without the signature.

the app is outlook for iOS. As you can see the first has an embedded photo, the second the photo is attached.

have a nice day.

I'm having the same issue, but only on my iPhone 7 and not on my iPhone X. I talked to apple support and they said that the functionality has been removed from older phones (why?). I have connected with them again asking whether the iPhone SE has or does not have the functionality and so far they havent been able to answer for some reason.

They also just informed me that the functionality should have been removed from all iPhones and that my iPhone X still having it is a bug.

montesa1 wrote:

Open TEXT messaging (not mail)

put in email address, then pick the pictures from your album.

they will come as attachments.

I have shared this and some of the “hi tech” guys don’t get it (too simple of a work around”

You're lucky if that happens to work with your phone carrier. But I can tell you that is not a guaranteed solution, in the same way attaching a 1 second video to the email works. Take a look at my screenshot. It shows up as an HTML email. If there was a way to make it formatted as Plain Text, then it would've automatically included them as attachments.

Dear Halliday,

Your wish is my command. Here is proof that your hypothesis is invalid. I took a screenshot of one of your replies that arrived in my email. Then then used the upload button and selected the built-in "Mail" app in iOS 14. The draft email that you see has the picture *embedded* into the email. The email has not been sent. It has not traversed the internet. It has not hit a Microsoft Exchange nor 365 mail server. It has not been opened in Outlook. Yet the picture is not attached. The picture is embedded in the body of the email. I sent it to both my gmail and 365 accounts. Whaddya know - it arrived embedded instead of attached. I just happen to have an old iPhone running iOS 12.5.1. I used the same process to add a picture to the built-in email app. I sent the email to both my 365 and gmail accounts. It came as an attachment. Seems like your theory is debunked. Please stop blaming Microsoft. Please stop blaming any email client that is not the one supported by Apple. As you can see, I have tested. I have also reached out to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) https://www.ietf.org/about/who/ Other than reply the same canned response ad nauseam on this thread, what have you done to try to solve this? I have thoroughly proven this using the Scientific Method (Observation, Question, Hypothesis, Experiment, Analysis, Conclusion). If you need help with running an experiment, please tell me your experiment. I am here to be a lab rat.

Ran a test. Sent an email from my iPhone using the Apple mail app, using a Gmail account. I then opened that email in Apple mail and compared it to opening the email in Gmail.

Results are that Gmail views the email attachment in the way that everyone wants, the Apple mail app views it as an image in the email body.

This means that the Apple Mail iOS app is the one deciding to view the attached image in this odd and annoying way.

Let’s take a step back.

You do see that there has been a change in how attached items look in Apple mail correct? Both when sending and receiving emails in Apple mail.

This is what these same emails look like when being opened in the Gmail App. This format is how the emails used to look (when sending and receiving) in Apple mail.

The above shows how attached pictures currently look when both sending and receiving emails in the Apple mail iOS app. The issue lies only with how Apple Mail is interpreting the data. They are still “attachments” yes, but visually they are different, and having to scroll past a full picture to long press the next one to download is annoying, especially if there are more than a few.

Everybody should be voicing their opinions to Apple through the proper feedback channels, there is no real fix sadly. This is real though, and to claim it’s not Apple that made the change is just not correct.

Doesn’t work fir me either. On an iPhone 8 with iOS 14.5.1.

JayZeeP wrote:

Microsoft does provide a free Codec to be able to open HEIC encoded pictures.

Sounds good!

I have the same issue. Very frustrating that this capability was eliminated. I need this capability or a different phone.

The only work around that has worked for my company is to record a tiny video (1 second or less) and attach it to the email along with the pictures. Then the pictures will be sent as attachments.

Not much of a workaround. Looks like it might be Time to migrate out of the Apple system because without being able to add pictures as attachments I cannot complete my workflow on my phone

I am going to be seeking alternatives if this doesn’t get fixed. My workflow has been hampered. Apple devices are suppose to work for me, not me work for apple’s whims in changing software

It's painful and I have not yet found a solution with Apple. This pushed me to try Google photos and do it there with my PC.