Emailing photo attachments from my iPhone 11

I resisted upgrading to IOS 14 until finally did at 14.3, thinking bugs would be worked out. I had not even heard of this issue with photos being embedded and that's an issue for me. Apple: I DISLIKE embedded photos in emails! I am a small business and email photos to myself to download on my HP laptop, for quick download and edit. Now the photos are embedded in the body of the emails I'm sending myself and they are smaller pixels/resolution and square--not what I want, even though I use the largest MB photo size when emailing to myself. I have to click on each photo in the email to open it, download, save and rename it now! COME ON, APPLE, CHANGE THE EMAILED PHOTOS BACK TO JPG ATTACHMENTS! I was about to buy an iPhone 12 Pro Max, but WILL NOT BUY ANOTHER IPHONE UNTIL THIS IS FIXED.

THAT SOLUTION WORKS, krwakefield! On my iPhone I made a 3 second video that I will attach with my photos when emailing them to myself. The resulting email does have photos show up in my Outlook email account as JPG files. APPLE, PLEASE FIX THIS! WE WANT EMAILS SENT FROM OUR IPHONES TO HAVE PHOTOS AS JPG ATTACHMENTS (NOT EMBEDDED) EVEN IF THERE IS NO VIDEO OR PDF ATTACHED.

Welcome, Chris-FW, to Apple Support Communities!

You are having to perform this per-photo save because you are using Outlook (any of its derivatives have the same issues). Right?

Have you not noticed that no other email clients force their users to go through this, regardless how the email appears to be formatted?

Apple has never been «forcing us to do business the way they want us to do business».

However, users do need to be wise about what tools they choose «to do business in the most efficient manner for [them]selves.»

In the case of trying to send (potentially many) photos to another location, email is, arguably, not the best tool for the job, even if it seemed to work at some points in the past: email will continue to evolve to better support human-to-human electronic communications.

That evolution will likely increasingly diverge from the purpose for which y’all have chosen to use it.

Yet. There are many other tools that are more specifically designed for sending files to remote locations and multiple sites.

It’s all up to y’all.

Go ahead and read the thread. Then get back to me. You're mistaken about Apple forcing us to do it their way. It's common knowledge. Ever heard of open source?!

If you read the thread, you'll realize it's not an Outlook issue. It happens when we embed and it happens with my other email clients.

Even so-called “open source” have myriad issues.

In this case, Chris-FW, Apple has been and continues to use Open International Internet Standards.

In fact, Apple is, typically, among the first to adopt the latest such Standards.

The issue is not about appearances—how any given email may appear when displayed (rendered) by any given email client—but about functionality—whether the user can perform bulk email attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) upon the attachments associated with any received email, regardless how said email client may choose to display (render) such email.

So, why have «you not noticed that no other email clients force their users to go through this, regardless how the email appears to be formatted?»

Are you, like so many others, only paying attention to appearances?

(I’ve read this, and other similar Discussions from the beginning. I took my time in evaluating the issue, including the nature of the various “workarounds”, before coming to the conclusion I and others have.)

Open source having issues wasn't the point. Far from it. Of course it has issues.

As far as the following, again you miss the mark. No idea where this comes from and it's not what I was saying so I'm not wasting time addressing every disprepancy.

Point taken, however, about Open International Standards.

I'm a data modeler who knows a few languages. I'm also an avid photographer. I probably have a better idea than you regarding batch uploads and the better tools available for such (which is not what I was talking about).

Thank you for the response. I was trying to help out others. Sorry the thread got hijacked by philosophy and theory. I stand by my statements. I offered a solution. That's really what readers on this thread wanted to know.

Chris-FW wrote:

…

Point taken, however, about Open International Standards.

I'm a data modeler who knows a few languages. I'm also an avid photographer. I probably have a better idea than you regarding batch uploads and the better tools available for such (which is not what I was talking about).

…

I certainly would not try to claim I know what «the better tools available for such» may be.

I simply know there are such, and trying to use a tool, with its own intended purpose, for some divergent purpose, is seldom wise, even if such may be utilitarian, temporarily.

You're right. It was a poorly phrased sentence. I apologize for it. I do not, however, agree that attaching a pic to an email from your phone is some divergent purpose. Actually, it's fundamental...or has been until now.

Chris-FW wrote:

… I do not, however, agree that attaching a pic to an email from your phone is some divergent purpose. Actually, it's fundamental...or has been until now.

Attaching a picture to an email is not, in and of itself, «some divergent purpose». However, neither is it «fundamental», nor has it ever been.

Back in the early ‘80s, all we had was plain-text (text/plain) emails, and attached files always had to be handled separately.

In those days, attached pictures, to an email, were more analogous to photographs enclosed within the same envelope as a typed or handwritten letter: the receiver had to, sort of, integrate them in their own mind.

Then, in the latter ‘80s, as we were having access to word processing—wherein we could integrate formatted text and images, at least, there was a push for similar capabilities within emails. After all, we now had that capability in “snail”-mail.

So, a number of rich-text formats came into being. The main one that is in most use, these days, is the one based upon the same HTML standard as webpages, text/html.

This used and still uses the same old email attachment methodology used in the early ‘80s, but references the attached files within the body-text of the email to integrate formatted text with images, and other multimedia files, in a manner like unto webpages, to provide a “word processed” email document.

So. The intended purpose of email continues to be facilitating human-to-human electronic communications.

Any attachment (or otherwise) of pictures, or other files, is strictly to facilitate that purpose: in this case, in a manner like unto word processing.

Hence, the attachment of pictures/images/etc. is incidental to the fundamental purpose—not, in any way, «fundamental», in and of itself.

Hence, using email as a means of transferring pictures, and other files, is, fundamentally, «some divergent purpose», compared to the fundamental purpose of email.

However, fortunately for y’all, there does not appear to be a “push” to replace the old attachment mechanism for images/pictures/etc., within the International Internet Standards that govern emails.

So, there is no excuse—at this time—for any email clients to prevent their users from performing bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves), upon their received emails, regardless how any given email client may choose to format (render) said emails.

Unfortunately, what has hit you, and all other afflicted parties, here, and in other, similar Discussions, is a tiny subset of email clients (only a single email client and its derivatives, so far as anyone within this entire Community has been able to find) that violates the aforementioned principle.

Furthermore, since none of that tiny subset of email clients is within Apple’s control, Apple has no way of correcting the actual problem.

Thank you for the explanation. I wasn't aware. Makes perfect sense and helps a lot. And, of course, Apple can't control other email clients. No issues with any of it.

FWIW, I started back in the mid 80's. I agree with everything you said. As far as International Standards, I'm a neophyte. I definitely need to get up to speed. I didn't consider International Standards with my initial post. Clears up a lot. My mistake.

Thanks again. (Chalk another one up to user error.)

Seems I have the same issue. I have an iphone 6S, and since the update I did in November/December 2020, (quite possibly to ios14.0) there has been a change where I email myself a photo from the phone to access it on my desktop, and the image comes through in the body of the email, not as an attachment as before the update. this takes more time and effort to copy the image into 'Paint' and rotate and resize it then save it to the desk top to then upload to a 3rd party (I do this 5 - 15 times a day in my role) this maybe a first world problem but it was so much easier/faster before the update, I could drag the file from the attachment bar at the top of the blank email, to the 'add image' on the 3rd parts webpage.

My colleague has an iphone 5 (both work phones) and this still sends as attachment (running ios13)

My IT department can't work it out and I wasted just under an hour of the New Zealand Vodafone Ninja's time going through all the settings and emailing myself over and over, and he could not work it out. hoping to get some feedback from Apple on this.

Thanks for your time.

A contributor advised that it was NOT an apple problem, rather an OUTLOOK/Microsoft problem. He sounded legit, but didn't offer a work around. Another contributor offered a work around solution. He said rather than emailing the image, TEXT the image to your email address and the image is then received as an attachment. I tried it and IT WORKED! So until a better solution comes along, that's what I am doing.

despite the absolute ridiculousness of this and the BS excuses they are providing, i have found that, like some of these other people, if you attach something else, like a PDF or other document to the email before sending, it then sends them all as an attachment rather than in line. Test it to yourself and see what works. thats the only work around that I've found to work (most) of the time.

send it as a text. Someone above suggested this and it works... for now. I can’t believe apple would not create a solution to this. We use Iphones for work. If they don’t fix this soon it makes our phones useless for business. I take hundreds of photos per week for work and have to email them out. No one is going to sit there and right click to save each photo. Come on apple...

I tried to send as a text and it doesn’t work. Maybe I am doing something wrong? I selected all the photos and sent to email via text but it didn’t send the pictures. It came as one photo only. This is really a mess.