Images appear as a question mark in mail and safari

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Level 1

31 points

Images appear as a question mark in mail and safari

I have just noticed a new problem in Mail and Safari. "Some" emails that contain pictures that are links are suddenly only showing the images as a small blue square with a question mark. If I click the "view this email in your browser" link in Mail it opens in Safari but with the same problem! Then if I paste the URL into Firefox or Chrome the email is displayed correctly. The email is also displayed correctly on my iPhone 6. I really can't figure out what has changed as it is has effected emails that are filed and that displayed correctly before. Any help appreciated. Many thanks Phil.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

Posted on Apr 27, 2015 12:10 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 27, 2015 5:06 PM in response to Phil Wade

This is usually an indication that the images did not fully download. Do you have selected to download headers only?

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Answer 2

Phil Wade Author

Level 1

31 points

Apr 28, 2015 2:54 AM in response to dianeoforegon

Hi Diane.

Thanks for the reply. Have checked this and mail is showing the full email. It seems to be linked to only a few senders of which most are using Mailchimp to send news letters etc. I know that several of the newsletters I have filed were displaying correctly last week but now have the main picture showing as a question mark as below. Very annoying! Phil.

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Answer 3

Apr 28, 2015 9:59 PM in response to Phil Wade

It's possible they are not attaching images correctly or MailChimp is not playing nice with Mail. If you log into your email account in your browser (webmail) do the images display correctly?

What happens when you click on the image? Do you get any type of message?

Do you have Flash installed?

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Answer 4

Phil Wade Author

Level 1

31 points

Apr 29, 2015 1:27 AM in response to dianeoforegon

Hi Diane

Thanks again for getting back to me. To be honest it seems to be my machine. If I forward the same email to anyone else it appears correctly.

If I view the email in my web browser in Safari the image does not show.

If I view the email in my web browser in Firefox the image is fine!

It seems to be something on my mac that is common to both MacMail and Safari.

Very odd. Phil.

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Answer 5

Phil Wade Author

Level 1

31 points

Apr 29, 2015 8:46 AM in response to dianeoforegon

Hi Diane.

I have just noticed one common denominator with the problem emails. They all have **SPAM-MED** in the subject line.

I have other emails with **SPAM-HIGH** and **SPAM-LOW** in the subject line but they appear to be ok.

Very odd!

Phil

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Answer 6

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Apr 29, 2015 9:25 AM in response to Phil Wade

Can you download the images to your Desktop to see if they will display correctly?

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Answer 7

Phil Wade Author

Level 1

31 points

Apr 29, 2015 9:31 AM in response to Eric Root

Hi Eric

Have just tried to drag one of the non showing images to my desktop but it does not work. As I try to drag all I see is the URL it is linked to but not the image itself. Other images with links from other emails drag and drop happily to the desktop.

Phil

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Answer 8

Apr 29, 2015 10:58 AM in response to Phil Wade

Is this perhaps an iCloud email account?

iCloud’s Junk Filter

As of April 2015, Apple has made its iCloud server junk filter much more aggressive. It is putting a lot more spam messages (and also some good ones) into the Junk mailbox. It also deletes some messages so that they do not appear in any mailbox. This affects all icloud.com, mac.com, and me.com e-mail accounts.

There is no way to turn off iCloud’s junk filter and prevent it from putting messages in the Junk mailbox. There are, however, various ways to make SpamSieve put its spam into the same mailbox that iCloud’s junk filter uses. SpamSieve can even re-filter the messages in the Junk mailbox to rescue good messages that iCloud put there. However, there is no way to rescue messages that were deleted without being saved into a mailbox. Since iCloud’s junk filter cannot be disabled, your only choice is whether or not to use iCloud’s mail service as a whole. If iCloud is not meeting your needs, we recommend switching to a different mail provider.

If it's not an iCloud email account, download the demo for Postbox and see if it will display correctly. Reasonably priced at $9.95.

http://www.postbox-inc.com/

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Answer 9

Phil Wade Author

Level 1

31 points

Apr 30, 2015 6:32 AM in response to dianeoforegon

Hi all.

Thanks to everyone who helped but I have solved the problem but upgrading to Yosemite and all emails now display fine.

I guess it will remain a mystery.

Cheers Phil.

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Answer 10

Digg

Level 1

15 points

Jun 25, 2015 12:41 PM in response to Phil Wade

For what it's worth, I've just seen this on one of our user's machine's running 10.8.5. It's definitely something within the user account and MailChimp as I set up their email in a temporary user account and everything displayed correctly.

When viewing the email in Safari, the images still didn't load. I right-clicked on one of the missing images and tried to open it in a new tab. That's when I was asked to accept a trust certificate for gallery.mailchimp.com. Upon accepting the certificate and re-launching mail, the images displayed correctly.

So I was able to "fix" the symptom - images not loading - but I have yet to find out why it suddenly didn't trust that site anymore. It sounds like upgrading (if that's an option) may be the easiest solution.

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