Forwarded pictures turn into little squares with flashing question mark
Occasionally someone forwards me some email with supposed picture attachments but the pictures don't forward and are represented by little squares with flashing question marks.
Louise, it means that Mail doesn't recognize the image files. It may be that the file extensions for the images is absent or the file type is Windows only.
There are a few things that cause this, I've found.
Sometimes it's because the email includes images in a format that Mail doesn't like, but it can also be because the attached graphics had their names changed (or were deleted completely) by an outgoing- or incoming-mail virus scanner, or because the graphics weren't really included in the email, but were really just HTML links to images stored on a web site somewhere, and the site has gone down or moved the images.
You can usually tell which has happened by looking at the message's attachments. If there aren't any attachments, then either they've been deleted or stripped from the message, or the message points to dead Internet links.
If there are attached files, you can look at them to see if they have names that look funny (e.g., many virus programs add the word "DEFANGED" to file names), and might have been changed. Also see if they come up with the right icon (Picture icon saying JPEG, GIF, BMP, or PNG, usually). If they're just plain white generic file icons, then they might be something that your computer can't read.
