Email photo as attachment, not embedded, in iOS 14

Please refrain from posting erroneous information about Outlook. As I said before I am no fan of Outlook but I cannot stand by while you wrongly malign behavior and continue to act as if you are all knowing.

As I said before there is a difference between embedding photos and attaching photos. Please search online for technical information regarding this difference because you seem to not grasp it.

This morning I ran a test in iOS. I sent two emails from Proton mail using their email client. On one of the emails I used Proton mails attachment feature to attach a photo. On the second email from the Proton email client I copied a photo from the photos app and pasted it into the Proton email (embedded it). I sent both of these emails to myself and then viewed them on my PC with Outlook.

Guess what? The email with the photo attached came in as an attachment. The email with the photo embedded came in with the photo embedded.

This behavior is standard email behavior and has absolutely nothing to do with the way Outlook renders it. Outlook rendered it exactly as sent.

Please refrain from continuing spreading erroneous information.

Actually, RichardTS, there must have been something else that changed, since people had already been reporting that iOS 14.3 didn’t “fix” this «errant behavior».

All it would have taken is an update of your Microsoft Exchange server, or an update of Microsoft Outlook.

Since you claim no change in Outlook, and since there has been no change in iOS 14.3, since the time it was released, and was already shown not to “fix” this «errant behavior», that leaves a change in your Microsoft Exchange server.

(As far as «non-standard behavior», it has always been Microsoft that seems to think they are “a standard unto themselves”, flaunting their lack of compliance with International Internet Standards, such as email standards, in this case.)

RussTuff wrote:

Finally...... how does this thread keep going? It's this simple "We want the option and we don't have it" FFS, how hard is it for people to get this?

Maybe because it a wrong place for demands. Here, you talk to other users like yourself. You want let Apple know, then go to www.apple.com/feedback and fill up the feedback form.

Don’t forget to send one to Microsoft too https://feedback.uservoice.com/forums/1-general-feedback

builder-al wrote:

There HAS to be a way to attach vs embedding a photo.. Has this been fixed yet?

Unfortunately, unlike the way these things may appear, and the way a certain tiny subset of email clients seem to have mis-trained their users, all files sent with or within an email have always been attachments, and always will be, for the foreseeable future.

There are at least two email body formats that can make email attachments look (format) different(ly):

• Plaintext (text/plain) email bodies cannot display attachments inline with text and other elements. (This is the oldest email body format, and has been going “extinct” since the ‘90s.)
• Various Richtext formats, such as text/html, can be formatted to display attachments inline with text and other elements.

However, regardless the formatting, all files sent with or within an email are always attachments.

As a result, there is, absolutely, no excuse for any email client to prevent users from performing bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) based only upon the way the email client displays the received email—regardless the format of the email body.

Yet. There is a certain tiny subset of email clients (actually, only a single one, and its derivatives, so far as anyone, here, has been able to determine) that persists in this sort of misbehavior.

The question to be asked is: should all email composing Apps be required to change their behavior, simply to try to get that tiny subset of email clients to “do the right thing”™️ with email attachments, or should that tiny subset of email clients be required to simply “do the right thing”™️ with email attachments, regardless how they may choose to display any received email?

(Since attachments are attachments, regardless of format, or the way any given email client may choose to display such; I believe the answer is quite clear.)

peteparent wrote:

… Yours[iW00] is the most logical path to a solution yet, enough so, that I've joined and am following your advice. Let's not just discuss it amongst ourselves, let Apple know! I for one, have just sent my feedback. Hopefully, others will follow suit. …

Absolutely. Provide Feedback to Apple!

Like iW00 wrote:

«[If] You want [to] let Apple know, then go to www.apple.com/feedback and fill up the feedback form.

Don’t forget to send one to Microsoft too https://feedback.uservoice.com/forums/1-general-feedback»

If y’all are interested, we can provide some guidance in what sort of Feedback will be most affective.

…

I think..... and I stress "I think" I have worked this out for the lame ones like me that just don't get it. What this community of people that don't chat, and don't do "Apple Support" even though this is the name of the forum, and Apple don't support or monitor these forums is this:

"It's Apples phone, and they will do what they like, you can choose not to use Apples phone if you like" Yes with their tongue stuck out at the end as they stick their noses in the air and show you their backs whilst walking away.

So... we have a choice, we "walk away" from Apple because their product doesn't do what we bought the product to be able to do, and were promised it would continue to do, or we put up with the ******** because of every other benefit until it becomes to much and we go to a Google phone (When they catch up of course)

That's how I have seen it, and the work around is obviously... use your Gmail account to send your photos to your email, and then send them on from your outlook email, or if the clients wants the photos now, send them via WhatsApp or MMS.

Sorry dude, I'm with you, however, It's take me days of frustration to work out what this community is all about let alone what the problem is. This community doesn't 'support', doesn't 'chat' I have yet to have anyone tell me a definitive answer on why it takes up space on the net. Plenty on guys will try and drag you off topic, other than that, please do what I did and "Google" a better place to get answers.

I don’t know what kind of iPhone you have, but in mine, when you select a photo and you click forward, the only choice you have is how it is to be sent ( mail, message, air drop, etc. ) there is nowhere to select how it is to be sent to these services. As I stated, before IOS 14, they automatically went as attachments. Now they automatically go embedded in the email which makes saving multiples extremely painful.

Use google photos for a quick fix. I ran in to the same issue. I use google photos to keep all of the photos on my phone secure. Once they are backed up in the app I log in to my google photos account on a browser on my computer and simply drag the photos in to my computer folders to store on my computer. Not an ideal fix, but certainly helpful.

CJCragg wrote:

Thanks. I guess I will do the same. I still can’t get I era the silence from APPLE.

Since Apple does not own any of the very tiny subset of email clients that don’t allow their users to perform the proper bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) upon their received emails, based only upon how said email clients choose to display (render) such emails; Apple simply has nothing they can “fix”!

People simply need to get the creator of this very tiny subset of email clients to fix this improper misbehavior that no other email clients “suffer” from.

Mystified-OZ wrote:

Best everyone can do is complain publicly through the many online computer and tech magazines

Actually, Mystified-OZ, the «best everyone can do is to complain» to the creator of the very tiny subset of email clients that prevent their users from performing bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) based only upon how said email clients choose to display a received email.

Since Apple doesn’t own any of these misbehaving email clients, there is nothing that Apple can “fix”!

Trying to demand that Apple “fix” this is an exercise in futility.

Stop buying Apple until they sort it is the only true fix.

We have approx 5,000 iPhones and 2,000 iPads and have been told by Apple there is no plan to fix this. Reluctantly we are looking at Android based systems.

It is just as I have always characterized the issue (once I understood it, about last October or November):

1. The root problem is that very tiny subset of email clients (apparently consisting of a single email client and its derivatives) that will prevent users from performing bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) based only upon their own, internal “reasons” (apparently, also reflected in how said email clients seem to display such received email).
2. There was a fragile “workaround” that allowed for the observed “cooperation” between that very tiny subset of email clients and Apple Mail.
3. Some change in the web of interdependencies occurred at about the time of the release of iOS 14: it could be a change in the default formatting of composed emails, in Apple Mail; it could be a new implementation of the latest Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) International Internet Standard, used in transferring email from Apple Mail to email servers, such as Microsoft Exchange servers; it could be both; or it could even be something else that happened to occur at about the same time.
   1. Note: we know this is more than simply Apple Mail because:
      1. Apple Mail still abides by the International Internet Standards that govern email creation and transfer: this is demonstrated by looking at the raw text of the received emails, as well as the result of Outlook’s own “Save As” HTML operation.
      2. There are, or have been, “workarounds” that only involve changing the destination of the first SMTP transfer from Apple Mail to any email server that is not a Microsoft Exchange server.
4. Said change broke the fragile “workaround”.

What you, and so many other users, are judging by is purely circumstantial evidence: a mere correlation (‘A’ changed at about the same time as ‘B’ changed).

There’s a reason courts of Law disallow circumstantial evidence: such can all too easily point in the wrong direction, misleading the entire investigation.

This is why it took those of us that investigated this issue a month or two to figure this out.

Welcome, Martin_Williams, to Apple Support Communities!

Since Apple has no control of any of the very tiny subset of email clients (apparently consisting of a single email client and its derivatives) that will prevent users from performing bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) based only upon their own, internal “reasons” (apparently, also reflected in how said email clients seem to display such received email); there is nothing that Apple can do to actually provide any «true fix.»

All anyone can do (other than the creator of that very tiny subset of email clients that have the problem that is at the root of all the problems y’all are experiencing) is provide fragile “workarounds”: “workarounds” that will break with even the tiniest change in the web of interactions involved in email transfers.

Has this been resolved? I'm still having to attach a tiny video file every time I send myself photos to force them to send as attachments rather than sending embedded. Feels like we're going backwards here...

Apple, this seems like an easy fix. Steve would be super disappointed about this one.

Rachel.H.U. wrote:

I had the same issue but found a work around: if your receiving email is in outlook you can go to the email, click on File in the command ribbon and save as HTML onto your computer. That drops all the photos into a folder as image files

Absolutely, Rachel.H.U.

In fact, this is one of the ways that proves that the problem of performing bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) is not due to any issue in the sent email, such as from Apple[s Mail, but is an issue of Outlook (and its derivatives): obviously Outlook knows that the attachments are there, because it saves them, using this procedure!

The only problem is that Outlook refuses to perform the bulk-save in the, otherwise, normal fashion.