Comments on: Where did my image go?

Question: Where did my image go?

beatnik808 — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:03:14 -0800

How do you make a jpg or pdf image visible when you are sending out a electronic mail merge?

I'm trying to send out an announcement with an visible image using an e-mail merge. Each time I perform a test the image is not visible. Tried sending a jpg. and a pdf. image, but each time I've done it only the text I sent with the image appeared. Any clues on where I've gone wrong or a better way to do this?

By: unixrat

unixrat — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:18:52 -0800

What Operating system, merge software used, etc, would help...

By: disillusioned

disillusioned — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:30:07 -0800

You can use basic HTML in the email, but you should be aware that Outlook, since 2003, automatically blocks downloading pictures in emails by default, and requires the recipient to manually download them by clicking a menu option. This is to prevent image trackers and other elements, along with porn.

By: mendel

mendel — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:38:35 -0800

Thunderbird similarly blocks images.

By: mendel

mendel — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:39:08 -0800

Oh, also: I don't think anyone really considers PDF files "images" any more than people consider Word documents to be images. Expect that your PDF files will only show up as attached files.

By: beatnik808

beatnik808 — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:45:15 -0800

OS: Windows 2K Professional and the version of MS Word 2000

By: holloway

holloway — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 14:17:51 -0800

(this is a programmery response, not a "click here to do stuff" response sorry)

Thunderbird always blocks remote images, and it sanitises what it thinks is spam/phishing through an html filter that removes images.

I think however that most email clients will display inline images (read: multi-part mime emails) which are different because they're in the email. This way the concerns about loading a remote image (and therefore being tracked, possibly by spammers) are negated.

Could you post the raw source/headers of the examples you've received so we can see?

The email ends up looking like an http stream,

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="PIEALT57206"
This is a mulipart message in mime format

--PIEALT57206

Content-Type: text/plain;Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit;
charset="iso-8859-1"

Plain text

--PIEALT57206

Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="PIEREL57206"

--PIEREL57206

Content-Type: text/html

Content-Transfer-Encoding:8bit

<html>
<body>
sdfsdf sdfsdf sdf <img src="../CID:Image9"/>
</body>
</html>

--PIEREL57206

Content-Type: image/jpeg; name="logo.jpg"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Description: "Image num.9"
Content-ID: Image9

(base64 encoded image)

--PIEREL57206--

--PIEALT57206--

See http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/9.html for an example.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2046.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2045.html

I don't know any email program that displays inline PDFs. And I don't know shit about Outlook [Express].

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 14:47:58 -0800

I don't know any email program that displays inline PDFs.

Apple's mail.app does.

By: beaucoupkevin

beaucoupkevin — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:33:14 -0800

If you are using Microsoft Outlook, you need to make sure that you don't have Microsoft Word set as your email editor. Go to Tools> Options> Mail Format> and deselect either button. You'll also want to ensure that you are sending out messages in HTML under the same tab. Word has its own special, slightly retarded version of HTML that it uses that consistently munges up any non-Word created HTML that goes out, with images usually being the first part to go.

I also recommend that instead of having the .jpg attached, you reference it through the web, using the IMG SRC tag and uploading it to a location like http://www.mycompany.com/images/email/logo.jpg or whatever. This means that it won't get removed by filters and it's generally faster loading, which should be a concern.

Don't try to insert a .pdf inline. It only ends in tears.

This is what I can think of off the top of my head. I work for these guys right now and the High Impact eMail product really does do a good job when it's working, which is most of the time.

By: holloway

holloway — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 03:12:14 -0800

beaucompkevin: yeah but he's asking how to make it appear, therefore referencing images through the web isn't ok.

beatnik808: I don't know which email software makes use of multi-part mime emails (I've only made them in software) but that's the most reliable method.