Email photo as attachment, not embedded, in iOS 14

tomjraymond wrote:

Here's another workaround I just found, from the iPhone.

In the photos app select the photo or photos that you want to email. Hit the upload (share?) button (square with an arrow pointing up out of it). Scroll down to "Save to Files". Save it where you want, I made a folder called "email photos".

…

Again, they already were «attachments».

The only change is in how that very tiny subset of email clients (consisting of a single email client and its derivatives) displays and treats the attachments.

…

Now you can go into your email composer. Instead of attaching a photo choose attach file. From here you can attach the photos you saved to files. The only caveat is it'll be in HEIC format. Right now Windows at least doesn't open that natively.

You can change the default format for the «photos» you take, on your iDevice, from “High Efficiency” («HEIC») to “Most Compatible” (JPEG). (Go to Settings -> Camera -> Formats.)

I decided to do some more extensive testing since I was seeing conflicting results. Here is what I tested with, iPhone 12 Pro with iOS 14 with native Apple email client only, iPhone 12 Pro with Spark email client and native Apple client, Samsung Note 20 Ultra with Spark email client, Mail.com client, Outlook for Android and Chrome browser for webmail capable sites. Lastly Windows 10 PC with Chrome for webmail capable sites, Outlook, Thunderbird and lastly eM Client. First, using the iPhone with only the native email application: no matter what client I used on Android and Windows, the pictures were embedded and not available as attachments, with the following exception; when viewing the inbox list for Gmail in the browser the attachments were listed and could be individually saved.

Next I tested email sent from the iPhone that had Spark installed. I sent the same pictures once using Spark to send and once using Apple Mail to send. The emails behaved like in the past (i.e. pre iOS 14). No matter which email I used to send the pictures they were available as attachments on all my clients on Windows and Android. Additionally, those sent using Apple Mail from that iPhone had the pictures both embedded in the body of the email and available as attachments to save. It seems, at least from my testing, that having loaded Spark email client on the iPhone made email behave like it used to prior iOS 14. Note that when composing the email using Apple Mail it still just says embedd pictures but on the receiving end you get both an embedded picture and an attachment.

I was having this issue too and stumbled across how to fix the issue. Attach the photo as normal, which will cause it to be inserted into the body of the email. Once it is there, you can tap on the image and two options should appear “send as attachment” and “remove”. Select “send as attachment”.

Once it has been changed to an attachment, you change change it back to being inserted by tapping on the image again and selecting “send inline”.

I hope this works for you!

NelsonPR1 wrote:

I found a workaround, but take it with a grain of salt.

I asked some friends to send me some test pictures using different OS (Win, Linux, Android) and all came in as attachments except iOS 14.

Solution;

Make a random blank file (pdf, note, 15 sec video) and name it "iOSFluxCapacitor" or "iOSDiscombabulator" ... :-) or whatever you want.

Adding the file with the image (s) will force the email system to attach, not embed, all the files including the image (s).

This is a known workaround, which seems to work by changing the overall “container” type used to «attach» the attached files: the files are attached either way, but the email client you are using at your receiving end (a single email client or one of its derivatives) doesn’t seem to recognize some “container” types, even though the “container” types have been a part of the International Internet Standard since the ‘90s. (This seems to show how far behind that single email client and its derivatives truly are).

NOTE: Hope this work for you guys. I know my life is a whole lot better now that I don't have to download each image one at the time, but all at once.

Only a very tiny subset of email clients (consisting of the aforementioned single email client and its derivatives) have this issue with email attachments.

I wasn’t sure if this has been answered but I think I accidentally found a solution.

1. Click on the attachment button at the top of my email.
2. Add the picture(s) and then if you quickly click on the picture once, it gives you the option to Send as Attachment or remove.
3. Click on Send as Attachment and it’ll attach to the email as it should.

**I included some pictures below.**

Tantalite wrote:

There is no “technical” solution because Apple doesn’t think there’s a problem. However, if you attach a document along with your photo, both attachments are available in the usual manner. You cannot make up things like this, in fiction it would be rejected as too far fetched. And yet, here we are.

Quite true.

Of course, with a little checking, it is provable that Apple Mail produces standards compliant email structure (MIME structure), whether one includes only a set of a single type of file attachment (such as photos), or a mixture of file types (like some sort of document, along with the images/photos).

While, on the other hand, there is but a very tiny subset of email clients (consisting of a single email client and its derivatives, all from a single [non-Apple] company) that seem to have some difficulty “doing the right thing”™️ with these standards compliant emails.

Hence, the only “technical” solution is to have that very tiny subset of email clients correct their functionality.

Unfortunately, that very tiny subset of email clients doesn’t appear to have seen substantive updates or upgrades since before 2010.

A really helpful member has already posted a fix to this, but I will repaste it here to save you looking.

If you have updated to iOS 14 and can't send photos as email attachments, there is a fix, pending Apple sorting, we hope, with the next update (14.0.2)!!!! This was driving me mad too as I need to do it for work. Record a 1 second video. Include it with selection of photos you want to attach. They will all go with the email as attachments, then you discard the video. Bit daft, but it works. Make it a really short video or it makes the file size of the attachments rather large. Hope it works for you.

Hi, A really helpful member has already posted a fix to this, but I will repaste it here to save you looking.

If you have updated to iOS 14 and can't send photos as email attachments, there is a fix, pending Apple sorting, we hope, with the next update (14.2)!!!! This was driving me mad too as I need to do it for work. Record a 1 second video. Include it with selection of photos you want to attach. They will all go with the email as attachments, then you discard the video. Bit daft, but it works. Make it a really short video or it makes the file size of the attachments rather large. Hope it works for you.

I contacted Apple Support and this is the response I got regarding the embedding of photos.

"yes, so looking at this a little deeper that is the expected behavior. It seems to be the new way of e-mailing within iOS 14. As of right now, it will show as embedded. If you are accessing via webmail hovering over the photo with your mouse will allow you to download". No option to attach anymore.

I have logged a request at the Apple feed back link. I would suggest that every one do this, as the more complaints they get the more chance of them fixing this.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html

Thanks.

I posted weeks ago on this forum. If you select the messages app instead of mail and put in your email address instead of a phone number you will get the email with the pictures attached. Do this until Microsoft or Apple figures out the issue. Works great. My whole company is now doing it this way.

The alternative is to record a very short (1-2 secs) video and send this with your photos. This makes them attach and you then discard the video. The advantage of this is that the video is in your photos folder.

But bizarrely, after all this, I found deleting my e-mail signature solves the problem!!! No more workarounds required. If your signature box is blank, put some text in and delete it. That's what I had to do.

I have found that removing my entire signature from my email account will work in sending pictures as attachments. You may need to restart your phone after updating your settings. Also it seams to work differently with different email apps. (outlook, gmail, etc.) I have removed my signature from an account just to send pictures as attachments.

go to: Settings/Mail/Signature

All All - I spoke with Apple and you cannot send images as attachments with IOS 14.3.

The only way to do this is by attaching a document first then attaching the images after which just a convoluted way of doing it. Such a waste of time and very frustrating!!

Please can you all raise this issue with apple and say we want it back the old way.

"Hi apple. We want to send images as attachments and not interlaced into the email! We need to send images as attachments. Can you please fix this in the next upgrade."

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

AlanBerry88 wrote:

All All - I spoke with Apple and you cannot send images as attachments with IOS 14.3.

…

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

It is so unfortunate that the «only a call center operative who did not know and their recommendation was to complete the feedback form. They did not know.» knew so little about email, and how it is structured (according to the International Internet Standards governing email creation and interchange):

All files (images, photos, anything) are only, ever, sent as attachments.

There are no other options!

The only thing that can change is how such things may be displayed by an email client, based upon the Formatting of the email Body.

Hence. There is simply never any excuse for any email client to prevent its users from performing bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves), regardless of email format, and how any given email client may display such.

Unfortunately, however, there is a very tiny subset of email clients (consisting of a single email client and its derivatives, according to all testing anyone on Apple Support Communities has been able to evaluate) that has this particular flaw.

Since Apple doesn’t own any of these misbehaving email clients, there’s simply nothing Apple can “fix”.

So. Anyone experiencing such misbehavior should contact the actual manufacturer of the misbehaving email client, if they want this issue to be fixed.

Anything else is a fragile workaround—subject to being easily broken by any tiny changes in the web of interactions involved in transferring emails.

Since there have been many posts on this subject, I felt should summarise what works for me. I am on iOS 14.4.

I don't like the idea of using the text app as I believe this just converts the message to an MMS, compresses the files and (in my case anyway) incurs extra charges.

1. Attach a very short video with your photographs. This makes the photos present as attachments. The receiver just discards the video. Not everyone likes this way around so:-
2. Use a g-mail (or I presume any other non-MS/Outlook derived e-mail system) as your default sending account on your iPhone. The photos then display at the other end as attachments, seemingly even when receiving through MS Exchange. If they are not presented this way with an MS derived e-mail account, send to the g-mail account. This always works for me.

I am very definitely non-techy so I hope this helps some of us out there.