Email photo as attachment, not embedded, in iOS 14

I had one of my users bring up this issue and I found out I was experiencing this issue too. I don't use the built in Mail app, I switched over to Outlook app a while back. In testing I found a way to work around it. It involves having no text in the body of the email message. I deleted my signature but you may be able to just delete it when you start a new message, I didn't test that. What I did was open the Mail app and start a new message. I clicked in the body and then the arrow on the upper right part of the keyboard to show the insert picture option. I added my pictures and then selected a recipient and added subject. I added no additional text to the body of the email and then the images showed as attachments on the recipient end. If I opened the camera roll and shared using Mail, it still embedded the images even without putting text in the body. I reported feedback to Apple about having the option of sending as attachments but who knows how far that will go. I am running iOS 14.2 so I'm also not sure of the results on previous versions. Hopefully this helps someone out though.

Again. IT_Support_Kyle, regardless how any given email client may choose to render (display) any given email, all associated files (images, photos, videos, movies, music, audio, etc.) are sent as attachments to the email. Pure and simple.

This is a very old part of the email Internet standards, and is very unlikely to ever be changed.

Apple certainly didn’t change this.

So, asking Apple to provide an option for sending «as attachment» is a “null” request: it is already being done and hasn’t been changed!

However, you could provide a, potentially, more productive request, by asking Apple to provide an option for authoring emails as plain-text, rather than a default of rich-text (which, incidentally, uses HTML, just like webpages).

I must, however, point out that there is simply no guarantee that this will “solve” anything, since it is abundantly clear that the issue(s) is(are) on the Microsoft side (Exchange and/or Outlook).

I been using iPhone to send photos MSN , Gmail and own web mail for 20 years and always want as jpg attach .

Now they want to reinvent this ?

I bought my son a 12 pro and he has a 10 not updated yet . Looks like it will be my business. Phone now , ****** idiots

Mystified-OZ:

Are you still confusing the way any given email client may choose to render (display) a received email, vs the way that all associated files (photos, images, music, audio, etc.) are attached to the associated email?

Such is completely independent of how any given email client may choose to render (display) a received email, and has not changed, and is highly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future!

The only problem, then, is in the way a small subset of email clients (with Microsoft Outlook being the only known member, so far) disallow you, the user, to perform bulk attachment operations, such as saving, merely due to how said email client has chosen to render (display) received emails.

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.

This is what Lawrence Finch and I have been telling y’all for quite some time, The Ram:

Regardless how any given email client may choose to render (display) your received email, all files associated with your email are attachments! Pure and simple.

This is a very old part of the email Internet standards, and is highly unlikely to be changed in the future!

Additionally, as has been well demonstrated—including by way of workarounds—the problem is strictly in any email clients (Microsoft Outlook is the only one that has been demonstrated to have the issue, as far as I know) that refuse to allow you, the user, to perform bulk attachment operations simply because of how the email client has chosen to render (display) your received email.

Sure. There was a change in either the default way Apple Mail formats authored emails, or in the implementation of a newer version of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Internet standard used to transfer email from Apple Mail to your chosen SMTP email server (going to a Microsoft Exchange email server seems to be the only troublesome link, here), or both; that seems to have triggered the issue that already existed in Microsoft Outlook.

Yes. Y’all are encouraged to send Feedback to Apple, via their Feedback webpages, as you have noted.

However, there is simply no guarantee that changing the default authoring format, in Apple Mail, will actually solve the issue.

It might, but no guarantee!

(As for Apple changing the implementation of a newer version of the SMTP Internet standard, I highly doubt that Apple will back-out of such a change, simply because Microsoft hasn’t made the transition, yet.)

Hi All

I use my phone to take photos and then email a batch of photos in 1 email so that the recipient can literally copy them all into a standard windows folder - does this sound familiar ?

I have just tried this on 2 phones and an iPad and this is what has worked for me.

Step 1 - Make sure any email signature is literally just text - I had to delete it all and start add just the basics

Under ios 14 I could not get this to work when sending from an exchange email to another email however, after doing the above in step 1, I then use my icloud email account for sending the attachments it works a treat. Not ideal if you want it to always come from your exchange email but as I only use it for a) quick resize a batch b) dump into an email c) most importantly its quick to save when received this does work for me. I am guessing this is just another way for apple to make it awkward if you use exchange on an iPhone and I will now definitely ask our company to look at Android going forward if Apple are not interested. We have over 10,000 iphones in our company so lets hope they address this bug soon.

This is what Lawrence Finch and I have been telling y’all for quite some time, Martin_Williams:

Regardless how any given email client may choose to render (display) your received email, all files associated with your email are attachments! Pure and simple.

This is a very old part of the email Internet standards, and is highly unlikely to be changed in the future!

Additionally, as has been well demonstrated—including by way of workarounds—the problem is strictly in any email clients (Microsoft Outlook is the only one that has been demonstrated to have the issue, as far as I know) that refuse to allow you, the user, to perform bulk attachment operations simply because of how the email client has chosen to render (display) your received email.

Sure. There was a change in either the default way Apple Mail formats authored emails, or in the implementation of a newer version of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Internet standard used to transfer email from Apple Mail to your chosen SMTP email server (going to a Microsoft Exchange email server seems to be the only troublesome link, here), or both; that seems to have triggered the issue that already existed in Microsoft Outlook.

Yes. Y’all are encouraged to send Feedback to Apple, via their Feedback webpages.

However, there is simply no guarantee that changing the default authoring format, in Apple Mail, will actually solve the issue.

It might, but no guarantee!

(As for Apple changing the implementation of a newer version of the SMTP Internet standard, I highly doubt that Apple will back-out of such a change, simply because Microsoft hasn’t made the transition, yet.)

Incidentally, so long as an Android phone tries to send directly to a Microsoft Exchange email server, where the received email will be viewed by a Microsoft Outlook email client, you will, as best we’ve seen, experience the same issue.

Embedded email

Hi,

Could you please advise a work around for email to added as an attachment - previous work around > to go phone gallery > select photo > send via mail but this no longer working.

Do we know if apple to launch another update to allow us to send photo via email as an attachment.

That still works for me. Select a photo, tap the Share icon (the square with an up arrow) tap Mail and it will attach the photo to a new email message.

Or start an email, hold your finger in the body of the email and a horizontal menu with appear. Tap the arrow at the right end, then Insert Photo or Video.

And, has been discussed over and over and over and over and over in this thread ALL photos in an email are attachments, whether they are displayed in line or not. Some receiving clients don’t give you a way to download more than one at a time, but that’s a failing of the receiving client.

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.

Mystified-OZ wrote:

We don’t need work arounds. We just need it to work as expected and has worked since iphone hit market . No excuses

Unfortunately, Mystified-OZ, since the actual issue is in a third party application (Microsoft’s, in this case), Apple has no control in making a third party application «work as expected», regardless whether such «has worked since [the] iphone[sic] hit [the] market».

Of course, you, and others, could do something constructive to help the situation by contacting the third party developer (Microsoft, in this case) and letting them know that y’all want them to fix their software «No excuses».

Hi all, despite what you all are saying I have just purchased an Android phone, connected it to my exchange server. I took a number of photos and emailed them to myself and it works a treat when I check on outlook, the photos are not embedded and come through as attachments.

Dont care what you all say but I am happy to share additional info but as for saying it’s all Microsoft seems untrue.

Thanks for the additional information, Martin_Williams.

So, are you sending from your email client on your Android phone directly to your Microsoft Exchange server, via SMTP?

Or are you sending from a GMail account, so sending to a GMail SMTP server?

The latter works on an iPhone, as well.

As I’ve written (multiple times), Mystified-OZ:

«Sure. There was a change in either the default way Apple Mail formats authored emails, or in the implementation of a newer version of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Internet standard used to transfer email from Apple Mail to your chosen SMTP email server (going to a Microsoft Exchange email server seems to be the only troublesome link, here), or both; that seems to have triggered the issue that already existed in Microsoft Outlook.»