Email photo as attachment, not embedded, in iOS 14

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 There was a change in either the default way Apple Mail formats authored emails, or in the implementation of a newer version of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Internet standard used to transfer email from Apple Mail to your chosen SMTP email server (going to a Microsoft Exchange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.»

The Ram wrote:

I am not an IT nerd or Apple wonk, but I am pretty sure that Apple made a change and now they are expecting Outlook to make changes on their end to adapt to Apple.

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 There was a change in either the default way Apple Mail formats authored emails, or in the implementation of a newer version of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Internet standard used to transfer email from Apple Mail to your chosen SMTP email server (going to a Microsoft Exchange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. (Emphasis added)

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(As for Apple changing the implementation of a newer version of the SMTP Internet standard, I highly doubt that Apple will back-out of such a change, simply because Microsoft hasn’t made the transition, yet.)»

Just because a change that Apple made triggered a preexisting issue within some third party software, does not imply Apple’s change was illegitimate. In fact, it is quite likely that Apple’s change is more in compliance with current Internet standards than Microsoft’s well known penchant for “dragging their feet” on Internet standards compliance.

Hi,

I am no IT Expert so rather than answering all the questions with tech replies I will say what I have done as I don't get all this SMTP etc etc - its just not my language. How anyone can say this is not an Apples to me is just utter rubbish as up until this update everything was fine - as the old saying goes "if it aint broke, don't try to fix it"

So on iPhone up until IOS14

I have simply added the mail account using the settings for exchange and entered the server, domain user name and password. I take photos, I select multiple photos, hit the button to drop them into an email, choose "large" and send. For years this is what I have done and when they arrive in any outlook client it shows up as having attachments with a little paperclip sign in the list of emails and you can "right click" on the line with the attachments and select "Save all". We have various phones and various versions of outlook and for years this has worked up until IOs 14.

Now - If I do the same since the update the photos are embedded in the email and you have to "right click", then "save as" on each one and browse to the network address where it has to be saved. In some instances this can take 5 mins per email where as before it took 3 seconds.

Work around on the iPhone now is to send from another account to the exchange account so I send from my default icloud account to my work account and this does work but its not ideal as I want the emails to come from my work account.

So as everyone was saying this is a Microsoft account I have just purchased as nice little Android phone. I have set up the phone with just the exchange account as the one and only email account using the default settings. I take photos, I select multiple photos and I send them from my exchange account to my exchange account so they appear on my work PC. And guess what, despite everyone saying its a Microsoft issue it works a treat.

I get that it may be the way that the Microsoft client looks at the email received from the apple account differently when sent from Ios14 but why did they have to mess with it ?

Rant over, any more questions I will happily to a video of what is going wrong but I can assure you, if Apple don't sort this out on their mail client, I will certainly recommend that the 1000 or so iPhones in our team go Android next time around as this is creating a load of work for what I see as no reason.

I only found two ways worked for me. The first method I used was to accompany the pictures with a VERY short (1-2 second) video. This makes the photos also go as attachments. You then discard the video. Seems mad but it works. Secondly, I have three e-mail addresses. One is on a Microsoft Exchange Server, the second is standard g-mail and finally the iCloud address which I think everyone has?. Sending emails from my iPhone, using the first address, Outlook on my PC shows them in-line (embedded). Using the g-mail or the iCloud address, they are shown as attachments as was the case before iOS 14, when any sending address was used. So I have just changed the default e-mail sending address on my iPhone to g-mail. No idea why!! But problem seems to be solved. I do hope this is helpful.

Thank you, I’ll give this a try- the video suggestion. Unfortunately I was using Gmail from my iPhone to send pictures in an email to a friend who uses the Windows platform. So the photos not being in JPEG format may be a whole other issue I can’t even begin to deal with from my iPhone! I’ll have to get on my laptop and “save” each photo I think in JPEG if sending to non-Apple email recipients? Ugh!! But thanks for responding - I do appreciate it!

nicncrs wrote:

Same problem here, after the update, it is extremely frustrating and time consuming for something that should have never been touched

“Never have been touched” Really? You mean that we should all be using IBM PCs with MS-DOS, because it worked, and Windows broke a lot of what it could do? Technology changes constantly, there are newer standards, and if you don’t update to them (as Microsoft apparently hasn’t) there will be no progress. While Apple is frequently on the leading edge of standards and technology advances, everyone catches up pretty quickly. Microsoft usually being the last.

What has happened in this instance, for people who haven’t yet read this thread: All photos sent via email have ALWAYS been sent as attachments. That hasn’t changed. Apple Mail still sends photos as attachments. The only change Apple has made is adding a tag to rich text email that says “Display that ATTACHMENT in the body of this message right here.” But it is still an attachment, and any competent email client receiving it should allow all attachments to be downloaded in bulk. Like Apple Mail does on iOS and Macs, as Thunderbird does, as Opera Mail does, as gmail does. The only one that doesn’t offer that option is Outlook. Even in Outlook you can still download photos by right-clicking on them; or clicking and dragging them to your desktop, it just has to be one at a time.

To add something new: If you are sending a lot of photos in one email enable Mail Drop, which instead of attaching the photos to the message will upload them to iCloud, and there will be a link in the message to download them that is independent of how they are received. Mail Drop can handle attachments totaling up to 5 GB. See ➡️ Add an email attachment in Mail on iCloud.com - Apple Support

Mar-10 wrote:

This issue is really annoying. Being able to attach an image to an email is a fundamental basic for any smartphone. Why have apple removed this feature.

I now can not use my iPhone for work. If it's not fixed soon I'll need to change phones.

Apple please bring back this basic feature!!!

Haven’t you read ANY of this thread. It is NOT about attaching images to email, which works perfectly. To be perfectly clear:

APPLE HAS NOT REMOVED THE ABILITY TO ATTACH AN IMAGE TO AN EMAIL

APPLE HAS NOT REMOVED THE ABILITY TO ATTACH AN IMAGE TO AN EMAIL

APPLE HAS NOT REMOVED THE ABILITY TO ATTACH AN IMAGE TO AN EMAIL

APPLE HAS NOT REMOVED THE ABILITY TO ATTACH AN IMAGE TO AN EMAIL

APPLE HAS NOT REMOVED THE ABILITY TO ATTACH AN IMAGE TO AN EMAIL

APPLE HAS NOT REMOVED THE ABILITY TO ATTACH AN IMAGE TO AN EMAIL

APPLE HAS NOT REMOVED THE ABILITY TO ATTACH AN IMAGE TO AN EMAIL

APPLE HAS NOT REMOVED THE ABILITY TO ATTACH AN IMAGE TO AN EMAIL

APPLE HAS NOT REMOVED THE ABILITY TO ATTACH AN IMAGE TO AN EMAIL

If you read the thread you will gain some understanding of what the thread is about. It is NOT about attaching an photo to an email, which works just as well as it always did.

Phenomee:

Both Lawrence Finch and I are well aware of the issues: what actually changed, what “broke”, what are the root causes, etc.

Internet standards, including those for email, keep “evolving”, changing, in order to better serve their intended purposes.

Apple simply tries to keep current with the Internet standards, unlike some companies …

The fact that this “march” of technological advance “broke” a use-case that was not completely aligned with the intended purposes of email, by way of a change in the email Internet standards, should be a “wakeup call” for all those that have been trying to use a tool (email) for a purpose other than its intended purpose.

Of course, in this case, if Microsoft Outlook didn’t have a flaw in the way it precludes users from performing bulk operations (like bulk-saves) upon attachments, merely due to the way Outlook chooses to display (render) a received email, your use-case wouldn’t have been broken.

It is up to y’all what y’all will do about this discrepancy between your desired use-case vs. the intended purpose of the tool y’all are using, and the actual “weak link” (Microsoft Outlook and Exchange) in your desired use-case.

”Attacking” the “march” of the technological standards (and those companies that keep up with such) will avail y’all nothing.

Haha - exactly. This thread has been all about problems of attaching photographs to emails post iOS 14. But photos are just one of many types of file that people wish to transfer electronically simply by attaching to e-mails and then the recipient selecting them in bulk or individually by way of the listed attachments. Whatever the iOS purists are telling the rest of us thickos, this issue has only arisen because of iOS 14 - Apple has changed its coding. Microsoft is being blamed for doing nothing. Why should they? Everything worked great for years. Maybe MS does have to do an update to deal with it, but it isn't heir fault. The matter should have been discussed with them before the change was made.

Surely the intended purposes should be determined by the user? If this is indeed a “march” of the technological standards perhaps Apple have taken a step too far in this "march" and should revert back to when it worked for the majority of users. If Microsoft Outlook and Exchange hasn't changed anything perhaps that's because it was working and didn't need to be changed.

Who cares, I'm not an advocate of any company Apple, Microsoft, whatever. I just want my technology to work and be easy to use. I wish I didn't upgrade to the latest iOS as it worked better before.

I don’t think I mischaracterized anything.

Why are moving pictures okay to attach but not still pictures (.mov vs .jpg)? Does MS Exchange look at attachment extensions and only embed .jpg, .png, etc, image files, but not other extensions.

I apologize that I do not understand internet protocols and standards. Maybe if I did I would feel super about migrating away from the terrible use-case of attaching an image to an email. Probably akin to me grabbing the cake fork when the waiter brings the salad.... reprehensible behavior to say the least.

Ya’ll Neanderthals just need to catch up with the times!

Scamp468 wrote:

Dear Halliday, I don't doubt for one minute the veracity of what you are saying. But please may I refer you to my response of 12:09.

(I’m in a time zone two hours different from yours, but I believe I found what you wanted me to see.)

Please read what I wrote to Mar-10, pertaining to users: the majority of email users (in the billions), vs. the subset in this particular use category (probably not even in the millions).

Besides, it is certainly not Apple that makes the Internet standards, not even the subset pertaining to email.

All file types are attached, Teggerman.

Why is that concept so difficult for some to grasp, or seem that way? Is it that so many judge purely by what they see, and go no further?

If you have yet to see «moving pictures» formatted inline with text, then just wait a few years (probably less). I’ve already seen it back in the ‘90s.

I am highly doubtful that «MS Exchange» changes the formatting of emails based upon the types of attached files. (Incidentally, the file-types are not determined by anything as crude and fragile as file extensions. They have never been. The email [package] actually contains “flags” for the various file-types. The standard even permits multiple versions of any given file—even of the email body itself.)

Unfortunately, even while I’m highly doubtful, I can’t be completely certain «MS Exchange» doesn’t do any of a number of non standards-compliant manipulations.

After all, we have seen how direct Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) transfers to «MS Exchange» email servers make a significant difference in how «MS» Outlook deals with the received email. Why that should be, if «MS Exchange» doesn’t do any of a number of non standards-compliant manipulations, is a mystery, at this time.

As for the use-case: the intended use-case of email has always been human communication, in a very similar manner to word processing documents.

Anything you can have in an electronic document, you (should be able to) have within an email.

It is for human consumption.

The attachment of files was, really, more incidental to that intended use.

(Of course, the ability to have rich formatted content, including images and other multimedia, has been an ever evolving aspect of this intended usage.)

You, nor anyone else, is to be “blamed” for having a tool, at the ready, and finding uses for that tool that are not completely aligned with the intended usage. It’s, essentially, human nature.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the saying about a person having only a hammer…

The fact that such use worked, OK, for years, simply helped “miss-train” you, and others. Even to the point that y’all probably didn’t even notice the developments of tools that are better aligned with this particular use-case.

Now, if y’all were like most users, and you only sent images/pictures on the odd occasion, the mismatch wouldn’t tend to bother y’all, I expect.

For those whose livelihood depends upon transferring large numbers of images/photos, and/or other file-types, to remote locations and/or recipients; the lack of knowledge of tools that better fit such use is astonishing.

Martin_Williams wrote:

You ask why is the concept so difficult to grasp? It’s because 99% don’t care about the if, why or how but simply it did work before the update and now it doesn’t.

best regards

Martin

If that’s how people wish to “play” it, they’ll be fooled by appearances, coincidences, and other circumstantial evidence.

Such is actually the root cause of all prejudice.

If that’s how people wish to “play” it, there may be nothing that wiser heads can do for them.

Yes, SteveTanu.

A perfectly good workaround for the way Outlook refuses to allow you to perform bulk attachment operations, such as bulk-saves, simply because of the way Outlook has chosen to display your received email.

Incidentally, that HTML folder structure is practically a straight save of the received email, because HTML is the way rich-text emails are encoded, with the images, or such, as attachments (just as with any email with attachments).

It is a “crying” shame that one even needs such workarounds, due to this simple failing in Outlook.