Email photo as attachment, not embedded, in iOS 14

I called Apple Support today with this same issue. I was escalated to a supervisor and they said it must be something they changed. I was advised that if I didn't like it to go to apple.com\feedback and file a complaint there. There is no setting to fix it, it will have to be fixed with another update if they decide that there's enough negative feedback.

I agree that this is not an apple mail client issue.

I did an experiment where I emailed from my iPhone Xs (iOS 14.2) two photos. One was a photo taken by the phone (.HEIC) and another photo that I received in a text (.JPG). The reason I know they are different is because when I open the Photos app on my home Mac, it displays the extensions (I share my photos over iCloud). The email I sent went to two accounts. One is a gmail and another is an account I access through an Outlook client. The behavior was different for each account.

The gmail account embedded the images but when asked to download, it downloaded them as files. Great!

The Outlook client treated the files differently. The .jpg remained an attachment (the usual behavior that we all like). The .HEIC image was imbedded and lost its "attachment" characteristics.

My conclusion based on this limited test is that the Outlook client is now treating the .HEIC files differently. I have no idea why or when. Not my area of expertise.

If you are stuck with an embedded image in Outlook, one simple work around is to right click the image in the body of the email and "save as" to a .png or .jpg file that you can work with.

I have found a fix for emailing photos from my phone to my outlook by downloading the Spark app, adding my email account to that, and then choosing that app to send my photos from to my outlook, as opposed to using the Apple Mail app. Hope this helps.

I agree, use Outlook. I wouldn't even call this a workaround. I installed the Outlook app on my iPhone 11 instead of using the Mail app. Outlook sends my pictures as attachments just as I have been accustomed to for years. Not sure why Apple made such a bad mistake with the new iOS.

I MAY HAVE FIGURED IT OUT!

Although prior to IOS 14, everything worked well sending attachments, it all went bad after. I have 3 email accounts 1 business, one personal, and one junk stuff (Hotmail). My business account and personal account are IMAP. The Hotmail is POP. When I'm on my phone, the default account is my business account, so when I want to send photos to my computer, I basically send from ABC.COM to ABC.COM. What I didn't realize is that when received, my phone auto-switched the sending email to my junk Hotmail account and the photos arrive embedded (coming from a POP??).

If I send from my business to my personal, or from personal to by business, multiple photos arrive as attachments. Ta-da!

Now whether this has anything to do with the difference between sending from POP or IMAP, or if its a function of coming out of Hotmail, I do not know. All i know is when sending from phone, choose a different address to send to.

So far the tests I did work.

@TarHeelTech - (in other words, Mr. Halliday is kindly requested NOT to reply to this - if you disregard my ask, I would consider it nothing short of harassment, since I have been crystal-clear about the value of your replies to my posts. I trust you will exercise some self restraint and be respectful of my wishes in this regard)

You sir, have a lot of optimism considering the level of detail you chose to write, in him addressing your points. Do tell me what got resolved for you once Mr. Halliday replied to your post? (Hint: it's a trick question!)

First of all, he is obsessed with this whole "easy bulk saving of attachments", so much so that despite asking him repeatedly to put that issue aside (which I acknowledge for some users is the end goal, which has gotten completely messed up with the latest changes from Apple"), he simply cannot do so. Do a search for how many times in the last few pages he has referenced that when replying to me, even though I have clearly said to him I could not care less about it! I find he has latched on to whatever arguments he would like to make, and is irrelevant what you ask for / present to him, when crafting his reply.

And unfortunately, despite all of his knowledge (it's obfuscation if you ask me), he still continues to get facts wrong. In one of his replies, he states: "...when this Outlook issue surfaced with previous iOS versions."

Yet I have provided detailed testing results indicating it is NOT just an Outlook issue. The same thing happens if I am looking at emails in Yahoo mail on my PC browser. The pictures are now embedded. That was not the case before iOS 14. Crazy coincidence I'm sure…

And that is because this is a problem when using the default Mail app!!! It is not the email client you use to view the email. It's HOW you send the pictures using your iPhone.

Which is why if you start in Photos, select a few pictures and then share them using the Apple Mail app, they get embedded (unless you use the trick of attaching another file to the pictures). But if you do the exact same thing using the Outlook app, you get attachments!!!

Another crazy coincidence I'm sure if you ask Mr. Halliday.

madisonNYC wrote:

Apple made a change in IOS 14 to stop people from being able to send pics as attachments when you use Apple's mail. Period. An Apple senior manager confirmed this to me. …

Do you have a reference for that claim?

I know I would be very interested in that.

… It has nothing to do with Microsoft, so don't muddy the waters. In fact, if you open a browser and sign into your hotmail account there, the pics will send as attachments. But if you use the Apple mail system to access your hotmail account, the pics will be sent embedded. THIS is what people are angry and frustrated about. And THIS is why people need to bombard Apple with complaints, demanding it reverse this terrible decision.

Y’all are encouraged to provide Apple with your Feedback.

Fortunately, using the definitive test, found at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251807601?answerId=254806789022#254806789022, to see what is actually going on; y’all can have the knowledge to provide Apple with the very best Feedback.

It’s all up to y’all.

@Halliday - Do you recall how sending an email with a single picture “attachment” using the native built-in Mail app would show up in Outlook prior to v14 of iOS? If it came as an “attachment” then, but doesn’t now, then the cause of the issue was the upgrade to iOS 14. If that was, indeed, the case, then please explain to my how an upgrade to iOS can somehow be blamed on Microsoft. I want to understand, but after 44 pages in this thread, I am still scratching my head. As always, thanks for your time participating in this lively discussion!

PS - I will again suggest that the easiest solution / work-around is to install the Outlook app on your phone. It’s free. It works with Gmail, Exchange/365, Yahoo, IMAP, POP3, etc. You don’t have to use it as your default; only use it when you are trying to send a picture as an “attachment”. No need to read any further in this thread. Takes 1 minute to download/install and 1 minute to configure. End of frustration.

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.

ahungryhungarian wrote:

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.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/f2a9a98e-d11f-4c60-9c4b-d29514a10aaf

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.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/da0d1524-46a3-438a-a393-fbaf7a815444

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.

Wow, kudos to you for writing all that and trying to explain the issue. If you had been following the last 48 pages of this thread though, you'd see the same response has been given to him dozens of times in the same vein by others who thought he simply didn't understand what we were complaining about, and yet made ZERO difference in his subsequent replies.

It reminds me of the customer service people sometimes you get who don't bother taking the time to properly understand the issue, and simply copy and paste chunks of text out of their training manual over and over and over again…

The challenges I have faced here remind me of the word "tone deaf", which is defined by the dictionary as "having or showing an obtuse insensitivity or lack of perception particularly in matters of public sentiment, opinion, or taste".

Good luck.

Welcome, jocelyne195, to Apple Support Communities!

See, for example, https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251807601?answerId=254902510022#254902510022.

Additionally, please see Add attachments to an email on iPhone - Apple Support.

I understand if you feel like these don’t help you. I wish there was a simple answer, other than needing a certain company (actually not Apple) to correct their email client software.

In order to test what is actually going on, see the definitive test at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251807601?answerId=254806789022#254806789022.

However, there are a few (likely temporary and fragile) workarounds that some have found to help the errant email client “do the right thing”™️.

Attaching a small email or PDF works but it is a hassle to do every time. You can also download the Outlook app and send your email from the app instead.

Don’t email Apple, they are apparently not reading those. Call them, talk to a live person, and let them know how this is affecting your company and your business.

If you touch the photo while in the photos app you can select copy, share, delete … select Share and the. Select your email app and it will send as an attachment rather than embedded. Not perfect but it works.

[SOLUTION]

Created an account just because this gave me the biggest headache.

You can send photos as attachments if you have the outlook app installed and signed in.

Just need to go to settings > Camera > Formats and change the format to "Most Compatible"

Then when you go to share photos from the Gallery just send them with Outlook (instead of Mail) and it adds it as at attachment.

Enjoy!

The workaround that I was able to use is:

1. Go into Photos
2. Select the photos you want to attach
3. Select the send button (like you were going to in a message)
4. Scroll down and select ‘Save to files’
5. Once saved, go to your email and select ‘Attach files’
6. Select the photos you just saved.