Hello!
When I send images to my client, they are coming to them inline and stretched/distorted and not as attachments. I have to zip them just to get them to my clients correctly.
Any way to have Mail send attachments as attachments?
Thanks!
OK, I figured this out.
If I drag and drop a JPEG from the Finder into a Mail message, it makes it inline in the message and it's not an attachment.
If I click on the paperclip button for attachments, it becomes an attachment. So I have to do this from now on when sending images.
Outlook for the Mac behaves the same way, BTW. If you drag and drop an image, it's inline. You have to use the attachment button.
Thanks again for your time and effort.
OK, I figured this out.
If I drag and drop a JPEG from the Finder into a Mail message, it makes it inline in the message and it's not an attachment.
If I click on the paperclip button for attachments, it becomes an attachment. So I have to do this from now on when sending images.
Outlook for the Mac behaves the same way, BTW. If you drag and drop an image, it's inline. You have to use the attachment button.
Thanks again for your time and effort.
If I drag and drop a JPEG from the Finder into a Mail message, it makes it inline in the message and it's not an attachment.
If I click on the paperclip button for attachments, it becomes an attachment. So I have to do this from now on when sending images.
All attachments are attachments.
Inline is merely a suggestion. If the recipient's email client is poorly implemented, it embeds the attachment into the message so nothing can be done with it. I'm not sure why any software engineer would think that is the way to handle an "inline" directive, but alas they do.
If it is well-written, the user can select how they want to handle "inline" directives. Others, like Mail, allow you to at least manipulate the attachment.
That's standard behaviour for Rich Text formatted emails - the Outlook default.
If you change the Message format in Mail>Preferences to Plain text, the attachment will always be an "attachment", not in line.
No, apparently it’s an issue that others are having that is only with Mail:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7663620
Options are to use Terminal to turn off this “feature”, get a plug-in for Mail, right-click in every attachment image and select Actual, or use another mail client.
I’ll test and see how it goes. I have Office so I might just switch to Outlook.
Thanks
Any way to have Mail send attachments as attachments?
Mail already does that.
You have no control over how attachments are handled by the recipient's email client. Demonstrate it to your own satisfaction by sending an email containing an attachment to yourself. If it renders correctly on your Mac, that's all you can do.
Change the Message format in Mail>Preferences>Compose to Plain Text. The Mail default is Rich Text (Outlook default) and sending attachments in line is hw Rich Text mails do it....
Outlook, Gmail, and Mail let me right-click on those inline images and save. This is on OS X.
My clients are on Windows and what they get is all screwed up. First off, I sent them PNGs and what they got were JPEGs that were squished, vertically. Apparently, they weren't able to save them because they said they couldn't even view them. And they were supposed to be PNGs! Ha. I zipped up the PNGs and sent that and everything was OK.
I'll just use the attachment button in Mail from now on.
Thanks again for your time and effort. 🙂
I did some testing on my Mac and if I drag and drop, but don't add any message, it shows up in my webmail as a PNG that is not shown in the message viewer.
If I add text to the email, it shows up correctly as a PNG and views in the message viewer.
If I add text to the email and use the attach button, it shows the image in the message viewer.
In all cases nothing changes about the file. It is still a PNG and it isn't altered.
All received messages indicated image/png and inline disposition.
Their email client is clobbering the attachment, not Mail.
And, just to confirm, you are dragging and dropping a file, not an image that is open in some other source such as Web Browser or Preview?
Attachments are always Attachments. There is no other way to send a file vial the email protocol. It is a pure text protocol. It must encode a file as text in order to send it over the email protocol as text.
It is encoded and embedded within the text stream and marked at beginning with file type information along with disposition instructions.
The execution of those disposition instructions is where poorly written email clients fail. An email client can choose whatever it wants to do with the disposition instructions. It can follow them or ignore them. It can do whatever it wants with the attachment. There is nothing whatsoever different about an attached file that is marked with an inline directive or without the inline directive except the word, "inline." I'm not sure why Microsoft's Software Engineers are incapable of writing an email client that is capable of properly handling a message that is completely within the standards of the email protocol.
Hello tallscot,
Don't believe everything you read on the internet. That Terminal command only changes how e-mail messages are displayed on your machine. It does not change the format of messages being sent. What you are describing is just a bug on the recipient's end.
And Mail on my iPhone doesn't have the same problem. I just sent the same JPEG from Mail on my iPhone to Gmail and it has the paperclip icon and it is an attachment.
So OS X Mail is the only one email client that does this.
Just an update for anyone else having this issue and looking for answers – I wasn't able to resolve this using Mail. My solution was to switch to Outlook.
Attaching images in Mail will always come through as inline and not an attachment on my clients' computers. It doesn't matter how I attach the images – using the Attach button, or dragging and dropping.
Mail in iOS works fine. Mail on OS X High Sierra gives me this issue.
If anyone finds a solution, I'd prefer to use Mail.
Thanks!
BPiphone wrote:
Tallscot, you say: "You can Save All attachments in Mail by selecting that command in the File menu of Mail." but in fact you can't when the images are "inline", they don't appear as attachments. That's partly why it's so annoying....
It works fine for me. "Save Attachments..." in the File menu. Just did a test now. Dragged multiple JPEGs into an email, sent, came to me with all the images inline, and then I did a "Save Attachments..." to my Desktop. They are all there on the Desktop.
Well, every single email client I tested sends a JPEG as an attachment to all the other email clients. OS X Mail does not. It sends an image embedded inline in the message.
I just sent a JPEG from OS X Mail to Gmail, and Gmail doesn't see it as an attachment. There is no paperclip icon that there is an attachment. It's not an attachment. It's embedded in the message.
Sending the same JPEG from Gmail, hotmail, Outlook, whatever gives me an attachment.
I never had this issue before. I've been using OS X since 10.0. Something changed at some point. OK, it's not a bug with Mail. Whatever. I have to switch email clients because 90% of the people I deal with are not using OS X Mail and I can't zip up every single image I send.
Thanks for the help.
Well, Mail is sending it in a way that no other email client does
It follows the email standards when creating the message. You can look at the raw source of the message and see that it is properly encoded. A properly created email client can handle all standards encoded emails. As my test revealed, my messages were correctly received and displayed by my email provider.
There are a lot of crappy email clients, Outlook probably the worst. It was only ever designed to handle Exchange email, but they bolted on the ability to handle "internet email," as they call it.
Attachments in Mail aren't attachments
