How to add images to email in-line??

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Level 1

23 points

How to add images to email in-line??

When I add images to an email composed on the iPhone using copy/paste or hold down and insert image, the image is inserted into the email 'inline' - what I mean by that is, on the iPhone I can compose message like:

Dear Sir,

Please press the button that looks like this:

[green button photo]

Definitely DO NOT press the button that looks like this:

[red button photo]

Yours Truly

Dr Doom

However when it gets delivered to my recipient, the mail comes out like this:

Dear Sir,

Please press the button that looks like this:

Definitely DO NOT press the button that looks like this:

Yours Truly

Dr Doom

ATTACHMENTS: photo1.jpg, photo2.jpg

I think this means the iPhone is delivering the message 'plain text' format. How can I force it to use HTML/Rich Text and avoid potential world-ending red-button disasters by keeping images in-line?

Thanks.

iPhone 5s, iOS 7.0.2

Posted on Oct 22, 2013 1:36 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

seb101 Author

Level 1

23 points

Oct 22, 2013 2:00 AM in response to seb101

OK - solved my own question. This is dumb design by Apple, they should at least provide a proper setting for it.

If you include ANY rich text elements in a message, such as bold, italic or underline then iOS will send the message as HTML/Rich Text, which means photos will be inserted inline and appear as you expect for the recipient. However if you don't include any rich text elements, iOS will send the message as plain text and add the images as attachments, so it will not appear as you expect for your recipients.

So, the 'workaround' if you want your emails to always be rich text, is to add a signature to the Mail settings (Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calendars->Signature) and include a rich-text element in your signature (make it bold). That way iOS will always send your messages as HTML/Rich Text and images will appear inline for the recipient.

Of course if you then ever want to send a mail with lots of pictures just as attachments - you will have to go and delete your signature.... sigh... poor design. It should be a quick option when you Insert Image, a pop-up with 2 buttons "Inline" or "Attachment".

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Answer 2

Jan 3, 2014 3:41 PM in response to seb101

Thank you. I had the same question. Such a simple solution. I completely agree with you that Apple should have included a quick Insert Image option.

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Answer 3

jj21

Level 1

9 points

Jul 7, 2014 10:32 AM in response to seb101

Your solution seems to work, thanks. but on my phone (iPhone 5s running iOS 7.1.2) the problem is actually worse than you describe (or better, depending on your viewpoint). If no rich text elements are included, then any text following the initial image also comes as an attachment - separate attachment for each chunk of text. So, in your example, it would have come out in my email (thunderbird on mountain lion) looking like:

Dear Sir,

Please press the button that looks like this:

4 Attachments: image.jpeg, ATT00001.txt, image.jpg, ATT00002.txt

Where ATT00001.txt would contain the text

Definitely DO NOT press the button that looks like this:

and ATT00002.txt would contain the text:

Yours Truly

Dr Doom

Most of the time one sees non-image attachments in an email they are usually some kind of useless meta-data, so people tend to not look at them. Of course, if I receive the email on my iPhone, everything is always embedded properly so the problem is not evident. It looks like the mail app on the iPhone always embeds all attached images in order at the bottom. I couldn't find any settings that related to this.

To save time with your solution, one can add an italicized blank space at the end end of one's signature line - which will force all emails to embed images in-line. This probably has the drawback of making your non-image emails take up more space and annoying some old-school types that don't like to receive rich-text/html-style emails.

Now my only problem is that the rotated images won't show up the right way in some email programs, since that information is only encoded with a flag that is not universally used. Even on my mac running mountain lion, the most recent version of thunderbird (which I use to view my email) will not rotate the images from my iPhone properly

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