Embedded email images what?

June 3, 2008 11:28 AM

What is going on when I sent an attached image from Mail (on my Mac) to an aol email address?

So, someone who runs a website wants to promote an event i'm hosting, and asked for a promotional image. Great!

But, when I tried to send the image (a jpeg, using Mail, on my Mac, 10.5.2, from a gmail account) he said the photo would "not open because it's embedded in the email text area."

He asked if I could resend the photo as an attachment, but I'm pretty sure that's what I did the first time. Is there something I'm not understanding? I clicked the "attach" button in Mail, made sure the "send windows-friendly attachments" checkbox was checked, and selected the file like I usually do. I kind of suspect it has something to do with the fact that he's using aol, but I'm open to the possibility that it's something I'm doing.

Also, I tried searching the wider web for information about this, and some of it was helpful, but it was all a little over my head. I won't be offended if you explain what's going on to me like I'm an infant.

posted by hapticactionnetwork to technology (4 comments total)

Have you tried doing it directly from Gmail? I'd test it that way, as an experiment to see if the problem is on the AOL account's side.

Also, the image-in-the-text-area thing is probably his spam-blocker blocking your message.
posted by interrobang at 11:57 AM on June 3, 2008

I'd just zip it. Sharing files with AOL users is hard for a lot of different reasons, many of which aren't even computer related.
posted by Plug Dub In at 12:05 PM on June 3, 2008

Mail tries to display images and PDFs in messages even if they appear as an attachment when you send them. Normally that isn't an issue, but AOL likes to do things the hard way and it can't properly handle those items.

The quick and easy solution is to zip the file. If you have this problem a lot, try Mail Attachments Iconizer.
posted by stefanie at 12:51 PM on June 3, 2008

Zip the file or send from a web-based email service, as suggested above.

As to why this is happening, I'd suspect that it's due to Mail creating email in Rich Text format (with some HTML hinkieness if I remember correctly) and this can cause problems with mail servers and clients that are a little less robust.
posted by lekvar at 1:05 PM on June 3, 2008