Mail.app is driving me nuts
 

Hi all

Im having a problem with mail.app and the embedded attachments. Incoming attachments being embedded is fine, but when I send email i would really (99% of the time) like for the attachment to be simply an attachment and nothing else. Im having many people, windows users, whom ask me to re-email them many emails or cant figure out how to save the images, etc. that i send them as they are just displayed (usually huge) on their screen. And many times, they just get the red X and thats all.

Please help me out. I feel like these silly issues, after years of having no problems like this sending/receiving attachments, are very unprofessional and are caushing a problem. Is there any way to change this? Is there a program out there that i can dl or buy that will alter the way mail.app handles attachments? because i cant find it. And it would be great if there was a program that also made all attachments "Windows Friendly" because, unfortunately, 90% of the world has Windows, so why the ***** would I not want to make attachments Windows Friendly, whats the harm in doing so?

Sorry, kind of upset, thanks in advance for your help.

Click on the Attach button in your New Message window. Select an attachment. Check the box "Send Windows Friendly Attachments". From now until you uncheck that box at some future date, all attachments that you add using the Attach button will default to using Windows-friendly attachments.

Trevor

thanks trevor. that doesnt seem to be the case for me however, i have to click it every time. And sometimes it happens that I forget. And when i drag a file from my desktop it will not do so.

Thank you for your response though.

Try quitting Mail, then opening up your Terminal (it's in /Applications/Utilities) and copy/pasting the following command:

defaults write com.apple.mail SendWindowsFriendlyAttachments Yes

Restart Mail, and see if that preference setting is now saved.

Trevor

hey trevor,

thanks for your expertise. The command worked properly and the box is checked on its own now. Thank you very much for this.

Is there anybody who can answer my other question about inline, embedded attachments? Ive found a few programs/plugins but nothing that really does what i want. I hope i dont have to switch to thunderbird...

…or you could go to the >Edit menu >Attachments and select >"Always Send Windows Friendly Attachments"—but that's not much fun!

i've been seaching high and low for this too..but no luck.

use plaint text format messgae or convert image/picture into PDF format-which is easy under Mac OSX...then the Windoze user should see the pdf attachment instead of inline(Mail calls it in-place?) image.

damn.. thanks randy i really appreciate your post (welcome to the forum!). I did not even think about converting to PDF, which you are right is easy on mac, and will do so when I can so thank you very much.

Too bad its still not a permanent solution, Im obviously not the only one with the problem it really should be something addressed in preferences. I guess I may have to install Thunderbird and use it to send certain e-mails or something..

just bumping it up... anybody have any idea about any solutions?

FYI, Thunderbird does the trick, hopefully its just a temporary solution (though the program is really not any worse than mail.app)

Type the following in Terminal - "defaults write com.apple.mail SendWindowsFriendlyAttachments Yes".

With out the "" of course...

re;
 

"'Windows-friendly' refers to the removal of resource files in attachments sent from a Mac system. Mac systems are based on UNIX file systems which uses forked files whilst Windows systems don't. The result of this difference is the apparent duplication of attachments on Windows systems, of attachments that are emailed from Mac systems. " according to this site…MacRiot
So that would not seem to help Humbrick's "Im having many people, windows users, whom ask me to re-email them many emails or cant figure out how to save the images, etc. that i send them as they are just displayed (usually huge) on their screen. And many times, they just get the red X and thats all."
These problems usually results from the Windows users default Outlook Express "Options settings"
If the Windows XP Home/Pro can't save the image attachment then go to the Tools Menu/ Options… and under the Security tab uncheck the "Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus".
If the Windows user does not want the PDF/images to show up in the body of the email then all they have to do is:
—Go to the Tools Menu/ Options… and under the "Read" tab check the "Read all messages as plain text"

Why does everyone want to run to the terminal when Mail has a menu command for this already?

The Classic Mac OS used forked files. Unix and OS X do not.

I think they suggested the terminal command because he had already tried using the menu command and it did not stick.

AG

well, I have to say I use mail to send attachments (regular and inline) to windows users all the time, without any problem. normally Windows systems just ignore resource forks if they are there (or maybe show them as separate but unreadable files...). so let me ask you a more basic question - are you sure you have your file extensions correct? Os X is tolerant of badly formatted file extensions; Windows is not, and will complain bitterly about it.

I'll add that some of this is not your fault - if they are seeing the picture (however huge) a right click should suffice for them to save it, and if they don't have their email software configured correctly...

Was just browsing through Applications and came across this. Trevor, thank you! Now one less thing to remember when sending to almost everyone.

Because it satisfies the geek inside.
That's one of the things that attracted me (a Linux/FreeBSD geek) to OS X when it was first released way back in the day. The beauty and ease of use on the outside and the geekiness under the hood.

I have a client that when she right clicks the image, she has the option to copy, select all or view source. I believe that she uses outlook express on windows.

Same here adrianlambert... I've tried sending messages in plain text, that sends attachments as attachments from my testing... Still I wish there was a option to select inline or attached file attachments...

I had the exact same problem. The only solution I found was a fix called Mail Attachments Iconizer at $6.00. You can find it at http://lokiware.info

I wish I had a fix that didn't cost, but this did the trick for me. Let me know how it works for you should you go that route.

This morning I sent from my mac at home, an email with three jpeg attachments to my work pc. The work pc says that it's running winxp professional, but it doesn't look like xp. I'm accustomed to the buttons in xp, such as the big red "X" which shuts down an application, looking a certain way. My work winbox, although it says on start up that it's winxp professional, looks more like win98.

Anyway, in Outlook, the jpeg images I sent only show in a title bar of the preview pane, not in the body of the message as they had in Mail on my mac.

I can right click on the titles of the images, and am given the option of opening or saving to disc. Curiously, from the File menu, the option for Save Attachments is grayed out.

Emails from others within our corporate system have sent me emails with attached jpegs, which display in the body of the message, not just in the title bar.

Looking in Tools>Options didn't seem to have anything which would change the behaviour I'm seeing. Nor did Tools>Customize.

Monday, if I remember, I'll try just dragging an image or two into an email message in Mail, to be sent to work. I've gotten into the habit of clicking on the Attachment button in the message's toolbar so that I'm sure that the image will be sent in a 'windows friendly' fashion.

I wish we had a winbox at home to which I could try sending. We have one, but my son goes directly to his webmail to see his messages, and doesn't use Outlook.

I wish I had a way to reproduce the winOutlook behaviour that's been described.

Try this :

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

It worked for me!

No more inline attachments :-)

:D

It's been almost three years since the original post. I wonder if the original poster ever came up with an answer?

Taking photos of my son's soccer for club and school, I've sent many hundreds of photos to parents of players from Mail. Most of them are using windows machines. There were some parents that had the same problem that the original poster described. The inline attachments that showed up in the body of the email were difficult to save, even when right clicking. Some could be coached to go to File>Save Attachment. Some couldn't.

It seems that settings in Outlook or Outlook Express would cause this, as I had a parent explain that he solved his problem with settings. But there was no way I was going to be able to explain tweaking Outlook settings to the various winbox users.

None of the recipients who used online mail ever had a problem. Only those with Outlook as their mail client.

But the problem all but disappeared when after attaching my photos in my email message, I would select all, ctrl-click (right click) and select View as Icon. Now the recipients received the photos as attached files, not as embedded inline images. They all could right click and save to their hard drives.

I have only had one person not be able to save to disc this way. Curiously it was the same parent who had described to me how he changed his settings in Outlook to be able to save the inline attachments that Mail sends. So I reverted to my older method when sending to him! :)

And since it's been some time since this thread began, I'd better say that I'm one of the folks still using 10.4.11. Mail has continued updating at times, and my Mail is now version 2.1.3. Has this problem gone away since Leopard and Snow Leopard have come along?

No, it's a constant F*(#*(&ing battle with everyone I to whom I try to send or receive something.

Every (*&#$ time I try to send an attachment the person on the other end doesn't receive it. At this point it's actually costing me money after a mockup was approved that the client never actually saw. It's driving me up the wall.

And it works both ways. People will send me attachments and I can't see them. If I go to the gmail web interface they are there, but the emails in mail.app are blank.

Mail.app has failed me for the last time. It's probably the shittiest software Apple makes behind their joke of a calendar app.

I note from perusing your posting history on these forums that the last few problems you had reported with Mail.app ended up being due to some 3rd-party system "enhancer" utility that you had installed.

Are you sure that your current problems aren't due to some similar 3rd-party incompatibility? Have you tried creating a fresh new user account (in Accounts preferences) and then sending email from that account? (just as a diagnostic test)