Mail and its attachments: why can't Win people see some of them?

[tuqqer]

Can anyone explain why some attachments placed in Apple's Mail aren't seen by XP viewers.

I don't have enough savvy to know how email works or how Mail handles attachments differently than, say, Entourage. But it does somehow. If I paste an image into Mail (say, through a screenshot via copy/paste), my experience is that it's never viewable with XP users. If I drag a file into an open Mail email, it's sometimes viewable and sometimes not by XP users.

And some images appear in Mail as file attachments (small standard icons with their name) while others fully appear, inline, whether I want them to or not. Sometimes two JPGs will be side-by-side, one an image, the other a file icon.

I've grown to love Mail over Entourage since switching back when Leopard came out, but E'rage did handle its attachments better.

I do wonder if there is some set of behavior rules that I could follow to make Mail attachments behave with more consistency.

[clay]

I don't specifically know what to tell you, but I seem to remember seeing a post about attachments here:

http://www.hawkwings.net/

Great site for general mail tips as well as other specific add-ons that can be useful to some folks.

[olnacl]

One thing may be the check box for "Windows friendly attachments" is selected and another whether your attached files have the .xxx suffix in the file name.

[ztirffritz]

Does it show up as an attachment, visible inline, or not attached at all?

The Windows Friendly Attachments option mentioned above would solve the problem with attachments. Formatting the message as HTML or Rich Text should help or solve the problem with in-line images. If the attachments don't appear at all after trying the above options, then I have no clue.

[MacMagus]

> Formatting the message as HTML or Rich Text should help or solve the problem with in-line images.

The exact opposite is the case.

Mail defaults to making html-emails. Many mail readers do not "like" inline graphics in html messages.

Make your message plain-text and encode attachments for Windows and you should have no further problems.

[tuqqer]

Ok, just did some testing from the suggestions here.

1. I always either drag and drop files into an open email, or I paste what's in the clipboard. These are both problematic compared to using the Attach button method.

2. I've always had the "Windows friendly attachments" box checked, so that's not it.

3. MacMagus has it right for my setup: I always use rich text email format (mainly to have a nicely formatted signature at the bottom of each email). Once I turn to plain text, attachments stop being inline and are all readable. Unfortunately I don't think there's any fast way to switch between Rich Text and Plain Text formatting in Mail. I'll have to decide to just switch over to plain text I think.

thanks all for the suggestions.

[tuqqer]

Ok, I found the whole problem, from an article by the great Joe Kissell

If you paste an image into a message or drag & drop an image from another window (say, a Web browser), Mail converts the raw image data to an attachment in TIFF format. On the other hand, if you drag & drop the icon of an image file (or use the Attach button to locate the file using the file browser), Mail leaves the attached image in its original format. This difference is significant, because although most email clients can display JPEG images just fine, support for TIFF - especially in non-Mac email clients - is less common. If possible, I suggest attaching image files as opposed to pasting or dragging in raw image data.

A vast majority of my attachments are done through the above methods, so that there is the issue. From here on out, I will only drag in icons of images.

[Silencio]

[quote tuqqer]Unfortunately I don't think there's any fast way to switch between Rich Text and Plain Text formatting in Mail.
Press Command-Option-T when composing a message to toggle between Plain Text and Rich Text modes.

[Article Accelerator]

"... although most email clients can display JPEG images just fine, support for TIFF - especially in non-Mac email clients - is less common"

So the answer is as one would expect: Windows--and its users--are lame.

As long as you always keep that in mind, you should have no problem figuring out how to communicate with them.

[tuqqer]

[quote Silencio]
Press Command-Option-T when composing a message to toggle between Plain Text and Rich Text modes.
Cool tip. Thanks for pointing that out.