How can I prevent mail attachments embedding when sending mail

It never worked. Image or PDF attachments have always been sent inline. View as icon is just that - view. The data is unchanged.

This is not a forum to complain about bugs. It is a forum to discuss workarounds to either bugs or features you don't like. All possible workarounds have been mentioned already - usually by me. All we are doing at this point is re-hashing workarounds that don't actually work.

What would work is reverting back to the way it used to work. Problem solved.

Again, it worked for me, so I was merely trying to help out by posting what had workd for me. I may have missed it, but I read through most of this insanely long thread and did not see the specific terminal command which ahd worked for me, so I posted it. I'm not sure why you feel the need to troll this board and **** and moan any time anyone offers any opinion that differs from your "it is a brilliant design feature that has remained unchanged since God himself created it" motif. I'd imagine an individual of your obvious technical knowledge could find far more constructive uses of your time than getting in a ******* match with everyone who seems to feel that losing a key piece of functionality is a problem.

Because this "key piece of functionality" has never, in fact, existed. Not even once. I've been using MacOSX since the public beta in 2000. The terminal command in question only changes the display of the attachment in your editing window. The attachment will still be sent inline. This is the same behavior that is has always had - from day one.

On Nov. 18, 2009, I filed an enhancement request to add the functionality that you claim has been removed. Apple closed my report as a duplicate. If you want this functionality in Apple Mail, you must install Attachment Tamer. There is no other option - not even a time machine.

Without challenging you about the issue as you perceive it, whether Apple Mail will cause an image file to View in Place as seen on your Mac is something entirely separate from issues that certain recipient email programs will have with a file that is attached with a Header that specifies Inline disposition, and can also be separate to the reaction certain recipient email clients wiill have to Rich Text/HTML use in the message that has an attachment.

To know anything about the impact of some change (whether in the Terminal or via, say, Attachment Tamer) you would do best to observe the message you sent as Raw Source. This is because the reaction that is problematic to what Apple has changed for sending email in Mail in Lion can only be verified by knowing how it works with everyone one of your recipients. For some recipients using Windows it will not be a problem whether you have changed anything or not. The problem is not Apple's per se, but rather at the recipient end of things, but triggered nonetheless by changes in Mail's sending.

Although I have done quite a bit of testing with Lion, I do not use it in my regular work flow -- this is in part due to possibile issues with sending photos from iPhoto or Aperture to Windows users, and also in part to a distrust of Lion to work ideally with my Adobe Design Premium suite and certain other pro apps.

I answered why this is different in Lion vs earlier versions of Mail long ago in this topic. I further reported on the communication I got from Apple engineering about this, and the substance of that communication was that the sending in HTML is deliberate and is working as they intend. Furthermore I have presented a way to work around the problem (which succinctly is failure to achieve Plain Text) by attaching a simple text attachment as the last attachment.

Now I disagree with the choice Apple has made in this regard, but it would not meet the test of a Bug, since 1) they know about, and 2) they state it is by design.

Ernie

FACT:

Prior to this change, bug, feature; sending and view attachments from the perspective of the sender (Apple Mail user) and recipient (non Apple Mail user) neither sender nor receiver had any issue viewing attachments, inline or otherwise.

Post change, e.g. bug, feature, whatever; now the sender (Apple Mail user) and recipient (non Apple Mail user) both have issues viewing attachments either inline or otherwise.

Problem did not exists previous to Lion. Now it does.

RESULTING OPINION:

Bug

SOLUTION:

Fix

RESULTING OPINION:

Yawn.

FACT:

In all previous versions this exact behavior was often a complaint here in these forums (etresoft's sarcasm not withstanding), and the only reliable fix was to assure sending without the presence of HTML/RTF. This now cannot easily be done in Lion at present.

I can send with Lion in a fashion where it will not misbehave in this regard, and that change will simply be to achieve Plain Text when sending. But the steps to do so should not be required I freely admit.

Ernie

Upon further review, it seems you are absolutely correct. If you go into the Snow Leopard, Leopard, or Tiger forums, you will find zero instances of anyone complaining about e-mail attachments. All e-mail attachments were sent in the manner the sender intended and were correctly viewable and saveable on all platforms. If that isn't a FACT, then I don't know what one is.

I will readily admit that much of this stuff is way above my level of expertise. Having had it explained by you and etresoft, I do understand that my terminal command likely had as much to do with my images being sent correctly as Santa Claus did. It might have been some other variable. And I obviously am not as qualified as you guys to argue the correct definition of "bug" but the fact (that I think everyone here agrees upon) that the former workaround of sending only plain text is no longer working seems like a failing on Apple's part. For the record, in the past, another workaround that seemed to do the trick was just to compress anything I sent. I don't think Mail will try to put an archive inline. This may not work (I haven't done it recently) and it IS a pain, but it's better than some poor PC user being unable to do anything with pictures we send.

On another note, etresoft's sarcasm is acutally pretty funny.

The free tool 'TinkerTool' has an option to at least always show attachements as an icon instead of filling the actual mail with a image of the attachement (was happening alot with PDF's for me, strangely in a mail with 2 PDF's one would be an icon and one not). TinkerTool is free and is basically Apple System Settings+ without having to go into Terminal or provide your admin password or anything.

Not strange perhaps, since all versions of Mail I can remember will view a one page PDF In Place, but not multipage ones. A one page PDF is simply another image file to View in Place.

Ernie

Oke, that might explain why some PDF's where shown as were images, they were indeed 1 page PDF's when that happened.

Anyway, TinkerTool fixed all my problems from a cosmetical viewpoint (and productivity, when considering having to click 'view as icon' everytime).

It is still amazing to see that it takes 3rd party developers to fix the bugs .... ohh sorry 'features' of one of the biggest tech companies, who ironicall say its products 'just work'. I can tell you, when using Windows I never had such crap with trivial things like this and iCal and suddenly changes that were not an improvement but a step back. Too bad Windows itself ***** the longer you use your computer....

The iCal fiasco (overlapping events layout is a mess, hiding behind each other and not being displayed side by side as is the case on iCloud and on pre-Lion OSX) is even worse

I prefer it the way it is designed, but can understand your wanting a Preference to disable.

Ernie