Email photo as attachment, not embedded, in iOS 14

Sorry again! I didn't install Gmail on this iPhone, because I know that the attachment actually works as an attachment!

I'm referring to Apple Mail, native to iOS and MacOS. In it, the photos become embedded in the text and not as attachments.

AntonioMarcos wrote:

Has such an inelegant feature been around for years and years and was recently removed? That was what happened?

What “inelegant feature” are you referring to?

The inability for users to perform bulk operations (such as bulk-saves) using email clients in that very tiny subset (consisting of a single email client and its derivatives), when they receive standards compliant emails for which they don’t properly respond?

Or the (inelegant) feature of manually changing attachment “formatting” directives? (Which may or may not get the previously stated very tiny subset of email clients to “do the right thing”™️?)

The recent “issue” with that very tiny subset of email clients started with iOS 14 (as per the Original Post [OP]). However, similar issues kept cropping up, and being “worked around” for many years, and many iOS versions, previously. (Back to, at least, 2010.)

I can’t blame Apple for no longer wishing to pursue such one-sided stratagee.

From what I understand the formatting options are no longer available we have no choice. The photos are only embedded and we cannot choose to have them be attached as separate JPEG files. I do not want our photos to become part of the actual message formatting, but separate and attached.

I suggest everyone to COMPLAIN!

I believe a shower of feedback can make Apple go back and bring back the most obvious feature ever created since email was created!

Please claim:

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

hilyshaf wrote:

From what I understand the formatting options are no longer available we have no choice. The photos are only embedded and we cannot choose to have them be attached as separate JPEG files. I do not want our photos to become part of the actual message formatting, but separate and attached.

The true point, hilyshaf, is that the photos, and other files, are always attached as separate files, regardless of Formatting. In fact, there is no such thing as “embedded” photos, or other files: they are simply attached, but (optionally) Formatted inline with the text.

The only problem is the very tiny subset of email clients (consisting of a single client and its derivatives, from a third-party developer, which haven’t been updated/upgraded in over a decade), which prevent their users from performing bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) based purely upon standards compliant Formatting: Formatting, in fact, which is specifically specified, by the standard, to be ignorable by any email client, whether because the client doesn’t understand the directive, or, for any other reason, chooses to ignore such.

Has a solution been provided by Apple? I googled looking for a solution and I came across this original question which was posted 2 YEARS ago! I am getting really frustrated. I’m hoping that perhaps I’m missing something obvious, but I have occasions where I’m asked to specifically send photos/documents as attachments. No matter what I do they only send as embedded and I keep getting told I need to make it an attachment. I’m not technologically savvy so any help is appreciated!

All I'm seeing is clunky work-arounds to Apple's screw-up on this update - it's been over a year and this problem hasn't been fixed?!

APPLE Support: why isn't there an easy way to override this nonsensical email behavior that you created?! You took something that worked easily and efficiently prior to the ios14 update, turned it into a headache, and yet you're just ignoring the outrage from your customers!!

There's really no better way than jumping through a bunch of artificially absurd hoops just to save a photo out of an email, and after you do all that you've still lost the picture's original name and attributes???

Seriously Apple, what were you thinking?? It certainly wasn't customer satisfaction.

This is not an Apple screw up. For the benefit of anyone who hasn’t bothered to read this thread, let me explain:

All photos in an email are attachments. ALL, EVERY PHOTO is an attachment. In addition, the email contains a link in the text to the image(s). But the images are not “embedded”, they are just displayed in the body of the email in most receiving email clients because of the included link to the attachment.

Any properly written email client has an option to download the attachments. Apple mail does on Macs. Gmail webmail interface does. Most 3rd party email clients do. If yours doesn’t you are using a brain-damaged email client.

Welcome, Tantalite, to Apple Support Communities!

You can perform the definitive test presented within my message at Email photo as attachment, not embedded, … - Apple Community (checking against the standards, that I linked to, there).

Since the definitive test demonstrates that Apple Mail generates standards compliant emails (specifically following the MIME standards), the only explanation for a very small subset of email clients failing to “do the right thing”™️, with such received emails, is a failure to properly handle such standards compliant emails.

(Actually. Technically speaking. Such misbehavior, by an email client, in not “doing the right thing”™️, with standards compliant received emails, is an allowed behavior. According to the International Internet Standards.

The standards do not require any specific behaviors of such receiving email clients.

Instead, it is up to the users of such clients to determine whether such behavior is acceptable, or not.)

Unfortunately, the email clients known to fall in that very small subset of email clients, have not had substantive updates or upgrades since about 2010, or before.

(Additionally, the company responsible for that very small subset of email clients is all too well known—one could say notorious—for “flaunting” international internet standards.)

As for the assertion that “everything worked fine [prior] to version 14.1”: you appear to be unaware of the many times, in prior versions of iOS, where similar “breakage” of Outlook occurred, over many years.

This is, actually, a very old “battle”.

I download attachments from email messages all the time. About a dozen today, all sent from iPhones. And your Outlook has changed; it is updated pretty regularly. Try using a full-featured email client such as Thunderbird or the Gmail website.

as it is unlikely that Apple will change the way it handles image attachments if it is an important feature get the right tool for the job.

I updated to iOS 14 yesterday and have the same issue. Please allow the same functionality as previous, or if it’s there, tell us how to use it.

Following for response from Apple/ A legitimate fix, I email probably 20-30 photos a day to my work email through my phone and not being able to email them as attachments is ridiculous...

The workaround with the 1 second video works. Lol.

Last update 14.2 seems to have the fix.