Email photo as attachment, not embedded, in iOS 14

Velkoon wrote:

Saving the email as HTML was the only thing that worked in Windows Outlook

Yep. This workaround is one of the ways we know that Outlook actually understands the attachment structure of emails from Apple Mail.

(i guess it sounds like we gotta wait on Microsoft to get back up to compliance with their attachment handling(?) )

Unfortunately, this seems to be the case.

Even more unfortunate, however, is the apparent fact that Microsoft hasn’t updated Outlook’s «attachment handling» since sometime before 2010.

Who knows how long people will have to wait.

Perhaps people providing Microsoft their Outlook feedback may help speed Microsoft’s response.

Apple, please fix this. It is very annoying to force all picture attatchments to be embedded in an email rather than attached. Often the reason people email pictures to others or themselves is to quickly get the file for another purpose, not just to view it. For example, I have a requirement from work to attach pictures of my receipts when filing expense reports. I take a photo, then I email it to my work laptop. Then I drag and drop the image into my expense report. With embedded pictures, I have to save each file one at a time to a folder first. It's slow and annoying. Please get the option in our settings to choose if we want to embed or attach images. Thanks

I found a workaround. Send photo to your gmail account. Open gmail in a browser (not in Outlook, etc.). The email message summary will show with a jpg attachment. Click on the attachment and the photo will open. Then click on the down arrow in the upper right of the screen. This will download the jpg file to your local hard drive. On Windows, you'll see the jpg file in the lower left of the screen. Click on the up arrow to get a menu, then select "Show in Folder." Now you can see the file on your local hard drive, at which point you can rename it, save it to another folder, etc. Truly ridiculous that it requires this much effort.

sunnyone47 wrote:

Truly ridiculous that it requires this much effort.

Agree. Imagine if only GMail and Microsoft (if you use Outlook app) would implement an option to simply download the attachments like you have it in Mail app on iPhone and macOS. They will make life much easier for many people including your* too.

I guess all it’s left is to send Google and Microsoft a feedback to implement better support for handling attachments.

*I’m judging based on the experience you have described.

sunnyone47 wrote:

Would it be too much to ask Apple to speak to Microsoft?

Since Apple is not Microsoft’s customer, why would Microsoft listen?

(I’m not a Microsoft customer, either.)

Is it truly so much to ask of customers to deal with the manufacturers of the software they use?

Agreed that we should also be complaining to Microsoft. But it is in both Apple's and Microsoft's interests to get this fixed. If my experience with my iPhone is unsatisfactory due to Microsoft, it's still a problem for Apple, even if it's not their fault. And given how big these two players are in the overall tech ecosystem, they should not require the petition of thousands of unhappy people to get this fixed. My guess is that someone at Apple has a better chance of getting Microsoft's attention than I do.

And I wonder if it's really a only "very tiny subset" of email users affected by this. I use a standard and completely updated desktop installation of Microsoft Outlook. Seems like that would affect a huge number of users. Is my installation somehow unusual?

sunnyone47 wrote:

Agreed that we should also be complaining to Microsoft. But it is in both Apple's and Microsoft's interests to get this fixed. If my experience with my iPhone is unsatisfactory due to Microsoft, it's still a problem for Apple, even if it's not their fault. And given how big these two players are in the overall tech ecosystem, they should not require the petition of thousands of unhappy people to get this fixed. My guess is that someone at Apple has a better chance of getting Microsoft's attention than I do.

Maybe, but Apple isn’t here. It’s just us, your fellow users.

And I wonder if it's really a only "very tiny subset" of email users affected by this. I use a standard and completely updated desktop installation of Microsoft Outlook. Seems like that would affect a huge number of users. Is my installation somehow unusual?

I never said it’s a «”very tiny subset" of email users affected by this.»

What it is is a very tiny subset of email clients (consisting of a single email client and its derivatives).

Additionally, it appears that Microsoft hasn’t updated the email attachment handling of Outlook (nor its derivatives) since sometime before 2010.

It sure seems like it’s long past time for them to get up to date.

Just emailed himself asking that they update their email client to 21st century. Will see if they respond.

You're suggesting that Apple doesn't monitor these communities threads to see what's bothering their customers? In that case, I need to email Tim Cook, too, to ask him to give Satya a call and get this straightened out.

[Email Edited by Moderator]

My workaround is to first save the photo to files, and then attach it.

You have to start from the photos app., click on the image you want to send, then select the share icon (box with arrow pointing up) at bottom left. scroll down to tap "Save to Files," select the destination folder, and click "Save" at top right.

Then go into the mail app. and start your email. Tap in the body of the email to bring up the menu, and scroll right to select "Add Document". Navigate to the location with in Files where you saved your photo and click on it. It will attach to the email.

I then delete the photo from files because I don't want the same photo taking up space in both photos and files.

Not nearly as easy as it used to be. Apple should fix this issue.

Lawrence, your statement is only partly correct. I just discovered this problem today when receiving photos in Yahoo web-mail using a Chrome browser, and found this thread, which seems to have evolved into more recriminations than solutions.

In some technical sense all photos are attachments because all attachments are encoded information that is included in the email packet in some form. BUT, there really is a distinction both for the end-user experience and in the actual MIME encoding in the message for "in-line" images versus ones that typically (when sent using other non-ios systems) show up as listed attachments for the user to save.

To illustrate this, take a look at this extract from the "raw email" containing several images -- note that the encoding is, yes, described as an attachment (as all MIME and similar content is) but is ALSO described specifically as "in-line"! The in-line display is not just arbitrarily chosen by the client software: the image was specifically labeled to be displayed in-line by the sender's iPhone.

--000000000000ad33ff05caf45d68--
--000000000000ad340005caf45d69
Content-Type: image/jpeg; name="IMG_2994.jpg"
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="IMG_2994.jpg"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: <17ba2e831f8e5828e8f2>
X-Attachment-Id: 17ba2e831f8e5828e8f2

/9j/4Ql2RXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAAgADgEPAAIAAAAGAAAAtgEQAAIAAAAJAAAAvAESAAMAAAABAAYA
AAEaAAUAAAABAAAAxgEbAAUAAAABAAAAzgEoAAMAAAABAAIAAAExAAIAAAAHAAAA1gEyAAIAAAAU
AAAA3gE8AAIAAAAJAAAA8gFCAAQAAAABAAACAAFDAAQAAAABAAACAAITAAMAAAABAAEAAIdpAAQA
AAABAAAA/IglAAQAAAABAAAIcgAAAABBcHBsZQBpUGhvbmUgOAAAAAAASAAAAAEAAABIAAAAATE0
LjQuMQAAMjAyMTowOTowMSAxMzozMjo0NwBpUGhvbmUgOAAAACOCmgAFAAAAAQAAAqaCnQAFAAAA
AQAAAq6IIgADAAAAAQACAACIJwADAAAAAQBQAACQAAAHAAAABDAyMzKQAwACAAAAFAAAAraQBAAC
AAAAFAAAAsqQEAACAAAABwAAAt6QEQACAAAABwAAAuaQEgACAAAABwAAAu6RAQAHAAAABAECAwCS
AQAK ...

The Base64 encoding goes on for pages and pages.

I have not had this problem of images not even displaying in-line with anything other than some sent from iPhones. I can see that there *IS* a JPG file, I just can't VIEW the JPG. If I can view images from other people, then yes, this is an APPLE problem.

randy-in-DC:

Congratulations! You are the first person, here, that has dared to show the Attachment structure of an email (presumably, from an email sent using Apple Mail, on some Apple device)!

The dividers you show suggest that there are more parts of the email you’re are showing.

Note: while you haven’t shown the entire email structure (we certainly don’t need to see the entire Base64 encoding of the encoded images), you will find out, if you check, that the entire structure is completely standards compliant.

However, I do have additional questions concerning the problem you seem to have with an email received «in Yahoo web-mail [accessed] using a Chrome browser»: Are you claiming that viewing such an email doesn’t show your received photos, even in cases with multiple photos or even a single photo?

Does the «Yahoo web-mail [client, accessed] using a Chrome browser», provide any means for bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves)?

If so, what happens when you try such?

By the way, andy-in-DC, the “Content-Disposition” component is entirely optional: both in whether it is included, as well as in whether any client even pays any attention to it.

It is purely a “formatting” level (how such is displayed) component, and is not intended to have any affect upon any other functionality.

Of course, if any client has any problems with any standards compliant message, such is strictly the problem of that client.

The iPhone email app is a nightmare. I think it is embarrassing that other developers have a better email app than Apple's. I use either the Edison Mail app or the Outlook email app. Both add your pictures onto email as attachments, not embedded in the email body. I hope this helps someone.

You can do this if you use the Gmail app on your iphone. Create your email, click the paper clip icon, add the photo which will be initially embedded in the body of the email. Click once on the picture after it is embedded and a text box will appear with two options - "Send as attachment" and "Remove". Click Send as attachment and the photo will now be an attached .jpg file.

May I offer this solution as described at 'Appleinsider'.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/09/28/how-to-share-icloud-photos

Works if the photos taken on your iPhone are stored in iCloud.

In Photos, tick the images you wish to email then from the SHARE button menu

select 'Copy iCloud Link' This is saved to clipboard and can be pasted into an eMAil

or any messaging app.

I do agree though, inline photos in mac OS Mail have been annoying me and countless others

for years.