How can I prevent mail attachments embedding when sending mail

Awesome. This is all I needed to get my photos from mail to show up as attachments when sent to a Gmail recipient. I'm just gonna keep a empty plain text file lying around on my mac's desktop to add to any messages I compose using iPhoto's "Email" button.

This also explains why there are empty text attachments in the photos I share from my iPhone.

I have not shared in this manner from my iPhone. Just so that I know exactly what you have seen, could do a photo share from your iPhone with me so I can examine the structure of the message? If so you can find an address for me by clicking on my name to the left and looking the bio line of the resulting Profile.

Most of my photo sharing takes place from Aperture where the issue is the same as with iPhoto.

Thanks for this info.

Ernie

Ernie, you are my hero. This has been bugging a friend of mine for months. It fixed the problem with Outlook 2007 at least. Thank you so much for taking the time to figure this out.

I have been using apple mail for over ten years, first with 10,2 and now 10,6. Every time I want to send jpeg images to newspaper(when my kids have their birthday for instance) I get an email back that says that I have to attach the picture as a file and not embedded. Everytime I try in different ways but always ending up with using gmail or some other web-based mail. How the **** can this not be fixed by apple. If I want to send downlodable pictures to people regardless of their mail-software, should I then have to turn to, gmail for instance?

<Edited by Host>

It would be nice to not have to work around, but it is in fact Outlook that is messed up. Microsoft has its own varieties of Rich Text and they care not to be able to handle from other sources. Apple and its Mail is not the only origin email app that has problems. Outlook Express and Outlook can have problems between them, with no interaction with Apple.

Ernie

Ok, many interesting things are said here. I am still curious how everyday mac-user manage to send downloadable jpeg,s to friends, co-workers, newspaper et.c. I think the solutions mentioned above does not fit apples otherwise userfriendly straightforward designs!

Gabbe

I don't know if this involves more steps than you want to take, but here's what I do:

I just attach a small plain text file along with the pictures, and then my friends who use both Outlook 2007, and 2010 have the pictures as attachments.

For me, that is less trouble than using a web-based e-mail client

Here's a thought. After over 1 year of valuable feedback, bug reports and real world reproduced instances of this problem, why not FIX IT?

One year? This particular behaviour in Apple Mail hasn't changed much in ten years. The "windows-friendly attachments" setting is a real anachronism. Outlook has changed much more - fixing some bugs and introducing others.

There is simply nothing to be fixed. Outlook itself has the ability to compose e-mail messages that cause the same problems. Like Apple, Microsoft can't go back in time to fix Outlook bugs.

Jeremy Kinsey wrote:

Here's a thought. After over 1 year of valuable feedback, bug reports and real world reproduced instances of this problem, why not FIX IT?

Nobody here can answer that question. Have you asked Microsoft why they haven't fixed it?

This is what you need. It will solve all of your problems with attachments displaying inline to Outlook users.

http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_control_your_attachments_mail

maybe this has been mentioned already, but why not just zip your images, problem solved

Too easy. People don't like it.

Since this thread has been resurrected of late; it is worth noting the variety of work-around solutions presented which are universal:

1) attach a non picture file with your picture (I use an rtf named 'ignoreme')

2) change the picutre somehow (zip it, etc)

3) Use a different mail client, or web-based system.

4) Pay for a plugin to prevent this behavior.

None of which fix the problem- which is that some email systems still see the attachment as encoded, rather than attached. The blame lies with the email providers and with Apple. I had not had this issue with OS X Mail until 10.6; but since 10.6- some email providers actually updated their system and started reading attachments correctly.

Also, Outlook 2010 can 'save as' even an inline picture. Macs can easily grab any image and save it.

So there is hope.

Thanks for the really great summary, Jared. Personally I use option (1) with an empty file titled "blank" (I use Apple's Mail under 10.8.2; this problem manifests itself for me while using iPhoto 8's "send pictures as email" function to Gmail users).

I didn't realize there was a plugin to solve this issue, can you tell me what it's called?