E-mail attachments appear as viewable page- want icon only

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Level 1

11 points

E-mail attachments appear as viewable page- want icon only

I send many e-mails a day with word and pdf attachments to them, to clients. Two things I struggle with and hope to solve.

1- I use the Mac mail system. When I attach a document, sometimes only the icon shows, and sometimes the whole page shows. From reading other posts, it looks like if the attachment is only 1 page, the whole page shows on my screen. I DO NOT want that. I print my e-mails for my files and when the whole page shows, an e-mail that should be 1/2 a page turns into a 4-page e-mail. A waste of paper and space in my files. How do I make all the attachments appear as icons? I have tried right click, "show as icon" and that makes only the icon show on the screen, but when I print the e-mail, the entire page of 1-page attachments print (although smaller), making the e-mail way too long. HELP!

2- is there a way, when I attach files, for them to appear in a separate line at the top of the message, like for windows/outlook users? I absolutely hate that whereever my cursor is at the time I do the attachment, that's where the attachment goes to. I often compose e-mail and then go back to revise something, forget to move the cursor, attach, have to delete, and go back and reattach.

Also I get Windows users who get very confused by my e-mails and keep replying and saying there was no attachment. I don't know where attachments show up on the other end but I'm getting issues with that, too.

Thank you to any one who can give me solutions!

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Aug 23, 2013 1:04 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Aug 23, 2013 1:24 PM in response to flammajamma

Right click on the attachment (displayed as viewable page) in the mail and select, View as Icon.

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Answer 2

elmnt

Level 1

27 points

Sep 4, 2013 12:34 PM in response to Csound1

This is easy enough to do on any individual message. I think the trick most people are looking for is how to make this a default on ALL messages.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20130223000057486

From that link:

Turn off automatic attachment preview in Mail

Mail, by default, provides a preview of attachments in can read, such as graphics and PDF files. However, you can run a command in Terminal to turn this off. Run the following:

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

Quit Mail and relaunch it. When you view a message, all attachments will be shown as icons only.

To restore the original functionality, run this command:

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool no

Found on StackExchange.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/24569/turn-off-automatic-preview-in-app le-mail

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Answer 3

flammajamma Author

Level 1

11 points

Sep 5, 2013 8:58 AM in response to elmnt

This fixed the problem perfectly. I had to google how to run a command in Terminal but easily found that. I submitted the command, tested it, and this took care of the issue. Now my e-mail attachments always show the icon only, no preview. Exactly what I wanted.

THANK YOU!

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Answer 4

Jan 21, 2014 4:19 AM in response to Lucian0

I have 10.9.1 (no idea what animal name that is) and the Terminal entry did not work for me either. Did I use Terminal correctly? I copied and pasted the line into Terminal, hit Enter, then closed the Terminal window - is that what I should have done? Does anyone have a solution that can be used on 10.9.1?

Many thanks for your help.

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Answer 5

jrwalco

Level 1

0 points

Jan 22, 2014 9:17 PM in response to flammajamma

I'm running Mail 7.1 on 10.9.1 as well. (PalmerMac, that's Mac OS X Mavericks.) None of the following worked for me to disable inline attachments.

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool true

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool 1

The sad thing is that Mail was displaying attachments as icons as per my preference until I started fiddling around with the converse of this command to meet a specific need. Now I fear my icons are lost forever (sigh).

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Answer 6

Jan 26, 2014 3:49 AM in response to Lucian0

Hello,

the command

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

is not helping me: Both received and sent emails look very unstructured. If the attachments are Office files (word, excel, powerpoint) then they appear as icons. Pictures and pdf files, however show up as they are but I would like them to be icons as well.

Is it possible the file com.apple.mail..... is not existing? Where can I find it? I have already looked in ~/Library/Containers but here I realized the problem beyond my IT knowledge.

If somebody could tell me what I should be doing to fix the problem it would be great

I should say my Mac is a Macbook Pro (2012) and the operating system is OSX 10.9.1 (Mavericks). The problem did not occur before changing to Mavericks, but I'm not sure whether this is related to it.

Thanks

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Answer 7

Mar 18, 2014 11:21 AM in response to elmnt

A MILLION points / thanks for this elmnt.

Apple has lost its touch with "ease of use". Where is the Mail viewing or composing prefs to toggle icon viewing (ver 7.2)? To have to resort to "defaults write..." Is absurd.

-thanks again. Problem solved.

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Answer 8

May 17, 2014 8:30 AM in response to Csound1

ccsound1 said to right click on the image attachment and choose "view as icon".

This worked - thanks so much. No way was I going to go back and forth between Terminal - sometimes I DO want to send as an image, sometimes that doesn't make sense -- this was easy, thank goodness -- I thought 'how silly to have to do a big runaround on (what should be) a super-simple thing!'

Thanks!

PS - I have Mavericks on a Mac Book Pro and this worked like a charm.

And yes, I have right click enabled on it. 🙂

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Answer 9

Sep 1, 2015 11:32 AM in response to flammajamma

I agree with those who said Apple has lost touch with ease. I just switched (or am trying) from a pc and it is ridiculous to think you have to code something to change the way attachments show -- icons are the industry standard. At the very least, make it a choice.

Thanks for the answer to right click on the attachment .. I'll try that. I do not want to mess with code on a brand new system. I bought a Mac because I am an end user:)

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Answer 10

Nov 18, 2015 4:24 AM in response to chrisneska

I have similar issues in emailing photos where the recipient only receives a thumbnail picture even though I send a full size icon as an attachment. The only way I can send photos via email is to go directly to google mail or use my iphone. I agree that the Apple mail is not easy to use and has severe limitations!

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Answer 11

mduniam

Level 1

0 points

Nov 30, 2015 8:44 PM in response to Roger Bloomfield

My biggest mistake was to switch from Windows to a Mac computer ... very disappointed! The mail attachment (icons or thumbnails simply get sent as an open document that is impossible for the receiver to open let alone read.) It is time that Apple stopped playing with software and fixed these bugs that keep popping up and inconveniencing users. I have just wasted 2 hours trying to fix this problem ... time I simply do not have ...

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Answer 12

Apr 20, 2016 11:06 AM in response to senhorochoa

Hi. I got the same problem now. I can only see icons of the various files i attach, but before changing the command in the terminal I had a little screenshot as my signature that now is gone.

Can someone help me restore it please ? It's very important for my business.. Thanks

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