I’ve found this to be a real annoyance, especiallly with a business where I have to send images in emails often. Mail.app by default displays images inline, and most email clients won’t recognize them as attachments. If you right click (or ctrl click with a one button mouse) on the image you can select to view the image as icon, which makes it behave like a normal attachment. To make this the default behavior you’ll need to use the Terminal to set the preference. Terminal is in Applications>Utilities. Open Terminal and type:
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes
That will make every attachment you send act like an attachment instead of a pretty unusable decoration.
If you decide this isn’t what you’re looking for, to restore inline attachment viewing type:
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool false
Restart Mail and you’re back to normal.
One more thing, if you’re having the issue that Mail is resizing your image like Lissa describes in her comment below, after attaching a file, make sure that you select “Actual Size” from the “Image Size” pulldown in the lower right corner of your message window.
213 comments
Thank you so much! This has been frustrating me forever!!!
Thanks indeed. We are starting to get inline porn spam though our filters and this at least stops it being displayed by default.
One other thing, can anyone tell me where the list of these application attributes are documented?
Glad I could help. The most complete documentation of hidden application prefs (including this one actually) can be found here:
http://secrets.blacktree.com/
Some are neatly wrapped up in a pref pane but many many others can be found there by clicking the ‘more’ link at the bottom of that page.
THANK YOU!! This has been killing me..
I just tested and it works fine when reading the message in Mail. But when I send a message from Mail.app to a Gmail account it still sends as an embedded image; the icon is smaller and cropped. A little strange that Gmail won’t recognize it as a proper attachment.
@spencer did you drag and drop your image into the email? I just tried emailing my gmail account and it came through ok when I added it by clicking on the ‘attachment’ button.
How do I undo the script and show messages inline again?
I haven’t tried but I assume like this:
**edit 07/28/10 ** I removed this as it wasn’t working. The proper fix is now added to body of this post **/**
I can confirm that GMail and anybody reading your message in Outlook will see your attachment as a small icon. It does not come through as a “proper” attachment by using the “View as Icon” option when viewed in Outlook.
Fantastic! It’s been driving me nuts.
Thank you so much – it’s the biggest annoyance I have had with Apple Mail (replacing Outlook).
This has been driving me crazy too….new to Apple
as of April this year, fantastic machine but some annoying and weird configurations.
YES!!!! GOD SENT I SAY!!! finally I can send attachments the normal way….. didn’t know about the hold down option though. oh well thanx anywayz
well done!
I’ve tried your script (both off and on) and it works to make the image appear as an icon instead of inline. However, my Windows-using recipients still tell me that they are not receiving “attachments” – even though it sure looks to me like I’m providing attachments. This only happens with JPGs. Would really like to fix this so that PC users see attachments that they can download. Got any more ideas?
Here’s a comment from a programmer friend with whom I’ve tested:
the email code looks like its auto loading the attachment and somehow its getting embedded
from the code:
kk
Hmmm… Your blog software must be filtering out the code sample.
@Kathy how did you add the attachments to the email, drag and drop or by clicking the attachment button? I would make sure you add them with the button, and then make sure that ‘Send Windows-Friendly Attachments’ is ticked on the bottom of the file selection window. If you’ve done all that already try pasting your code into a pastebin (pastebin.com) and I’ll take a look.
One more thing! Use plain text email.
Set Preference to plain text, set to “send as windows friendly attachment” & email & select “view as icon”.
Sent email to myself & still the file comes embedded in text & not attachment.
Any ideas?
@Mark I just emailed you. I’m pretty stumped there. I’ve had success with exactly those settings. I guess at this point either you or the person you’re sending images to should switch to Thunderbird, the Mozilla email client.
I’ve been looking at this very problem today for someone at work and this application looks like a promising solution: http://lokiware.info/Mail-Attachments-Iconizer
I’m not sure if the plugin works by modifying settings like the one you mention or if it manipulates the mime-headers prior to sending the mail and for $15 I can’t be bothered to find out
Seems to work.
Hi Micah, When I typed “defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes” into Terminal it completely disabled me from attaching anything. I tried undoing it with “defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool no” but Mac Mail still won’t attach. HELP!!
Update::: Through secrets.blacktree I found to turn on Inline Attachments you type “defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -boolean-neg” into Terminal. I tried this – still no dice. Attachments can’t be added by dragging into the email nor by using the “Attach” button. Did I just screw my Mac Mail forever?
Have you tried rebooting your Mac? I doubt you’ve screwed your app forever, I find that when Mail hiccups it usually gets fixed by a reboot. If that doesn’t work you may need to delete your preferences file:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
Sorry for the 3rd Comment but this one is important to note. Found on this forum http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=485751 : “Email won’t attach: Is the option ‘Always Insert Attachments at End of Message’ checked? I think this is a bug in Apple Mail. If you have the option selected, and you try to attach a file with NO text in the message, the file never gets attached. But if you just type a little bit of text, it attaches fine.” THIS was my problem. Not your Terminal command suggestion. Terminal command works! THANKS!!!
Oh you LEGEND – you have bug-fixed an inline issue I have had for ages..Thank you so so much!
Just switched to Mac, love it but like others a little frustrated with the mail.app. I followed this forum thread. Sending mail with attachments now working but the company logo in my signature switched from an imbedded image to an attachment when opened. Tried to go to the signature preference and drop a new logo in but to no avail. Still shows up as an attachment. Any help would be great
I found this on the interwebs somewhere:
Kmail: Default to Plain Text Alternative
Posted: Jul 16, 2005 12:21 PM
If you prefer to have Mail show you the plain text alternative (if it exists) of all HTML or RTF formatted messages in the Message Viewer, quit Mail and enter the following command in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE
Ah, the way email was originally intended…quick and simple.
To restore Mail’s default handling of HTML or RTF messages, quit Mail and enter:
defaults delete com.apple.mail PreferPlainText
@Leslie I’m afraid I don’t use a logo in my email signature anymore for that very reason. I’m a plain text email sender all the way.
@S, <3 plain text email. No funny business.
you are a dead set champion, thank you. saved the day superman!! love your work!
I have a problem with MacMail. If I am using a signature, I can’t put an image (say a screen grab) inline in the text of my email. If I turn off the signature, I can do inline pictures in the text of the email, but if the signature is on the picture always goes to the bottom of the page. Help!!
@Rod I don’t really mess with images inline anymore, because they get embedded in the message, which is usually an undesired behavior for me. How are you adding your image to the message? CMD+V? Attachment button? Drag n’ drop? I would try different ways and see if any work for you. If you’re just pasting from the clipboard, try creating a new file in Preview first (File > New From Clipboard) and saving it somewhere first. If you’re using the attachment button, try just dragging the file into the message, etc. Not sure if any of that will work for you.
I am naming my next child after you!!!!
This was the worlds biggest ass pain!!!
Ok so my problem is I can’t get attachments to open. Some will and some won’t. I’ve looked everywhere and no one has an answer. Please help.
Thank you! I just switched to a Mac and ALL my clients are complaining. I’m ready to ditch it and go back to being a PC.
Question – All of a sudden I cannot send attachments through the Mac Mail program. I can through mobile.me. I can receive, and have a good strong connection. The spinning wheel of death goes round for about 5 minutes and says the something about the server. When I do diognostics everything comes up fine. Any ideas?
@Tim @Erba This ain’t a support forum for Mail, sorry! I just wanted to share a setting I found that helped me out. One thing you can do that tends to fix most things right up… reboot your Mac.
Thanks. On day Apple will realise that to become a real business machine they need to stop trying to be to cool…
Hello,
I tried this
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes
Yes it does make every attachment you send act like an attachment instead of a pretty unusable decoration on my mac but now when they arrive on my PC they have turned into inline thumbnails instead of the normal attachments!
So, I tried
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool no
to put things back in their original state but no luck, still doing the same.
HELP, what do I do now?
Jenn
@Jenn I think this will do it.
**edit 07/28/10 ** I removed this as it wasn’t working. The proper fix is now added to body of this post **/**
Micah,
Thank you for all the informative posts. I know the arguments against using only RTF/HTML email, but I still want all my messages sent in RTF all the time. I have found that even with RTF selected in preferences Mac Mail seems to almost randomly send in Plain Text sometimes anyway. Do you or anybody else out there know how to force Mac Mail to always send in RTF? Also, I have noticed that recipients of my RTF emails sometimes also receive an .HTML attachment. Is there some way to prevent that from happening as well and why is that occurring? It doesn’t happen for the same friends receiving RTF/HTML email from other PC users.
Thanks so much!
James
Great fix! Thank you! I take it this is one of those gifts that keep on giving, given that you posted this a while ago and people like me are still benefiting
.
thaaaank you very very much!!!!
it’s really very anoying!
Help! I too tried to put things back to their original state after my work signature turned into inline thumbnails! I tried your “fix it” code (as given to Jenn) but it didn’t work.
Any other ideas??
@Carolyn Leroux – Alright, I just now successfully enabled them using this code, and restarting Mail. I’ll add this to the original post now too.
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool false
@James I’m sorry I really don’t know. I could dig around but I really don’t have much interest in RTF mail at the moment.
@Kmart Yes if I ever implement threaded comments, this will be my testing ground! I’m surprised apple hasn’t resolved some of the issues related to Outlook. It’ll always make it hard to justify buying a Mac as a business computer.
Thanks Micah for this topic. I’m a PC user since 1992 and just shifted (thanks god) to Mac one month ago and being suffering from the attachment issue. However, i have found a program for Mac called “MacPilot” and you can disable or enable this option and it works. I just tested it. Maybe i will find better way in future but so far so good.
Good luck to all
THANK YOU!!! Worked perfectly! I really appreciate it!
One more note, for signature with image or logo, you need to try this free utility http://www.littleknownsoftware.com/sigpro/
I’m happy with my Mac now and hope that future versions of mail would eliminate of our use of 3rd party software solutions!!
just switched to mail from outlook, and having implemented your fix, I’m now 100% happy
thanks!
Thank you! How incredibly frustrating, and absurd to need such a devious solution.
As already been said, this has been annoying the cr@p out of me since day one. Very big thank you!!!
UGH! So, I’m one of the lucky few that this tip is still not working for? Entered code on Terminal, made Plain Text, attached using button, Windows friendly attachment indicated, restarted.
It just keeps reducing the attached image and inserting inline of body. boo
Hey bro, you’re a genius. Apple deliveries have seen dire quality issues in the past 5 years, which is more reflective of how microsoft do tech releases, i can’t believe apple releases new operating systems followed by numerous patches and applications that have upgraded and are missing vital functions that were in previous versions. My PC mates can stop whingeing now
You are a legend – this has been bugging me for YEARS!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
Thanks Micah. Is Apple paying you for this yet???
THANK YOU!
You ARE MY MAN!!!
Thanks, that’s exactly what I was looking for!!! 
Here is my issue. I have a signature in my mail that has my company logo and certification. well when I send it the person that gets my mail will get a bunch of attachments. any idea how to get change it so that my signature will be displayed when someone receives it?
This tip does not actually work. Not in Snow Leopard anyway. It sort of seems to. But if you look at the messages in another email client, like Outlook, the images will still show up embedded. If you look at the message in your sent mail, and view the message’s raw souce (View -> Message -> Raw Source) you see that the following line: Content-Disposition: inline; This is what determines for the recipient if the images is shown inline or not. There’s not way to set it to Content-Disposition: attachment: other than using a third partt plug-in. Bummer.
Thanks for the info about the ‘in line’ image info. My friends and I have been racking our brains for weeks trying to deal with the problem.
Thought that I was going to like it but then noticed that it converted an icon/logo that I use in my email signature. Any fix for that issue?
Thank you very much for sharing this. I recently went back to Mac Mail from Thunderbird because I was unhappy with Thunderbird, and this issue was bugging me. Big thanks again!
@Charlie you could make your signature in HTML and use a remotely hosted image.
Thats a massive help, thanks man.
It’s just a shame we can’t get mail to either a) place attachments under the subject bar like outlook or b) default mail to place the attechments under the signature/email instead of where the cursor is placed.
Awesome, thank you!!!!
I notice that I have to keep doing this every time I switch off mail or my comp. Any idea how I can make it stick?
Thanks again.
Hi,
I’m helping a customer with his mac problems and he has following email issues:
when scanning documents with his All-in-one, they appears as JPG/JPEG in his email. This is fine. I prefer to have the images as icons but it is not disturbing.
The problem is when my customers wants to print out his email he sent or recevies, then all the inline documents are also printed.
An example: he is a lawyer and scan 30 pages document into an email to be sent to the court. When finished he needs to print out his email (without the attachments) to store it in a file for legal reasons. So each time he has 1 email printed with 30 pages (scanned) also printed which he needs to recycle each time.
Can he have just the option to print the content of the email without the inline or attached iamges/pdf/…?
Thank you.
Erwin
Hi Micah, I am using OS Tiger and have tried your original post by using the terminal with the command defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes
but wasn’t successful. I don’t know what I am doing wrong. Thanks.
Micah — I am not at all technical, so I took your instructions very literally: I just opened ‘terminal’ and pasted in the command. No luck. After several tries, I finally checked out the menu bar/command bar/whatever ya call it. Under ‘shell’ I chose “new command” and pasted your command. And TA DA!!!! Fixed. Thank you!!! I will check with recipients about what they see on their end , but on my end it looks good. Thank you!
Hi, Thanks for the advice. I needed to disable the inline attachment viewing, and this worked.
The problem was that once reset with that command, there is no right-click view icon as image option. (If you are aware of that capacity I would be interested to know how to do it).
I want to reverse the setting however the command you have provided is not working for my system. Here is the result in :
firstname-lastnames-macbook-pro:~ firstnamelastname$ com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool false
-bash: com.apple.mail: command not found
firstname-lastnames-macbook-pro:~ firstnamelastname$
Your advice on how to reinstate the default setting would be deeply appreciated.
apologies… I just worked it out… I was saying “salabim” instead of “simsalabim”.
Brilliant!
PS: if you know a method which renders the inline image attachment by default an icon, but enables rightclick into image… that would be cool. Cheers
Micah,
Stumbled across your fix to take out the inline. Nice, however, how do I go back to the original way?
Thanks,
@ Mike – Keep reading… I put the reverse command in the post.
Fantastic! Thanks for the info.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! This has been driving me crazy for months! I couldn’t figure out why some attachments were going in as a file and some as a “preview”. All better! Whew!
thank you thank you. I just had to manually adjust 50 pdf files I was sending until I googled my query and got your site. THANK YOU UGH, that image crap was sooooooo annoying.
Hey all,
FYI – In Snow Leopard (maybe in others as well, I don’t know) if you just right click the image after attaching, and then select “view as icon,” it will do the same thing, just on an individual attachment basis rather than every time. Also, if you have enabled this feature, you should be able to do the inverse to individual attachments to make them show as inline images.
My only problem is, that if I am using a logo in my signature, I can’t send it as plain text, or the logo goes away. If I send it as rich text to make the logo work, then it doesn’t register as an attachment in Yahoo, GMail, etc.. Any ideas?
Thank you so much for posting this! I work as an in-house designer at a corporation. I’m one of 3 mac users so everything I send goes to someone with Outlook. It was very annoying to have to right click and “view as icon” all the time. We FTP all the large files so I only have to send a link, but really don’t want to FTP the small files. That would slow me down too much!
Thanks for the easy workaround!
This is insanely helpful — I have been tearing my hair out trying to figure out a way of turning off inline viewing. ¡Muchas Gracias, Señor!
Hi, Thanks for the advice. I needed to disable the inline attachment viewing, and this worked. The problem was that once reset with that command, there is no right-click view icon as image option. (If you are aware of that capacity I would be interested to know how to do it). I want to reverse the setting however the command you have provided is not working for my system. Here is the result in : firstname-lastnames-macbook-pro:~ firstnamelastname$ com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool false -bash: com.apple.mail: command not found firstname-lastnames-macbook-pro:~ firstnamelastname$ Your advice on how to reinstate the default setting would be deeply appreciated.
@Daisy – You left out “defaults write”
[...] Pro user tip: If you want to disable Mail’s inline image preview feature (where you see the full-size image in the message body), as I did, click here. [...]
Micah, YOU are a scholar and a gentleman. Thank you. This has been a pain in the are for as long as I can remember!
Thank you SO MUCH – wish I searched for your answer sooner!
brilliant!!!! well done. why not publish this on the discussions page. spread the word
Bless you. All the other sites have contrived workarounds that don’t work. You must be a genius.
I’ve got a problem. I tried your script and unfortunately it messed up the images in my signature. I undid it and the sig worked fine. Today the sig is messed up and I can’t get it back either by putting in the stop script or re starting mac mail or my machine. HELP!
Never mind, it was another issue that I was able to fix. I had checked “use the same message format as the original message” in my attempt to solve the previous issue and never unchecked it.
truly wonderful, can only repeat all the good things already said. a million thanks
Awesome, cheers dude
Just want to add my thanks. What a star !!
Mahalo!
I did exactly as you described and yes, it disables and enables the file to be viewed as actual image or as an icon inside the email body but it does NOT do what is supposed to happen once it’s sent: attach to email as an actual attachment for someone on Outlook to see as an actual attachment instead of embedded.
I copy/pasted your terminal command to disable and sent my email with image dragged into it. I viewed it from Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007, and both do not get attachments — both have images shown embedded in the email, never attached no matter what I do (dragged into email or hitting the attachment button on Apple Mail). How are people getting this to work?
I found your little tidbit today by googling the problem. The reason I finally gave up on my AOL email address and migrated to gmail is this very same kind of nonsense, so I was disappointed to find that Apple Mail was doing the same thing. Your fix worked really well, very easy.
and also adding my thanks! brilliant! cheers
Thank you so much! This has been driving me crazy forever!
Thanks a lot, I’ve been sooooo annoyed with this. Thanks for your solution!
thanks for the solution, although i didnt work as i expected. people got my attachments as thumbnails, but they werent able to click on them or got them like attachments.
they just look like inline thumbnails and for you to see them, you have to right click and select “view image” that way you will see the big version of it.
i guess there;s no solution for this, just change of app
Really?? I needed to write friggin code to change that???? It worked like a charm! Been annoying me for MONTHS! THANKS MICAH!!!!!
Can someone please address this issue?.I have a signature in my mail that has my company logo and certification. well when I send it the person that gets my mail will get a bunch of attachments. any idea how to get change it so that my signature will be displayed when someone receives it?
New to Mac (just over 1 month!). Here’s a problem I’m having. When I attach a .jpg and then view as icon it has the extension .jpeg. This is a HUGE headache because I need to send multiple small file pictures every day to a company whose software insists that attachments be .jpg …… .jpegs are automatically rejected. I get by by uploading them directly but that’s tedious and time consuming. Emailing is much more convenient. Can I stop the conversion of .jpg to .jpeg?
Disregard the above concern. I got it fixed. It turned out to be a setting on iResize, the batch reducing software I’m using (which is a very good app.)
Thank you for comment about the small image. I did not see pulldown menu at the bottom.
One solution I didn’t see mentioned is to pre-compress the image file (jpeg, png, etc) as a zip file before attaching to the email message. (right-click the image(s) and select ‘compress…’) Mail app always seems to treat zip files as attachments and doesn’t place them as inline html/rtf content.
Content help me to create kitty
You are a star!!!!!! Brilliant.
Tried this fix and my first attempt was similar to many of the posts above – small thumb nails are all that went through. Then I quit mail and relaunched it. After that the attachments went through properly.
Thank you for this tip. It saves on tons of paper when printing a lot of emails.
This is great, had many problems with clients.
But, is there a reason why the image of the company logo in my email signature got reduced in size?
Thanks! Great tip, worked like a breeze. No more one-page PDFs “bloating around” in my messages.
Just found this – it’s been bugging me for ages. Problem solved. Thanks very much.
Thanks Micah for this advice was a great help!, Leo.
Thanks Micah for the great advice!
thanks for help, this is a very annoying ‘feature’ of mail app, caused me a lot of ‘can you send it as a normal jpeg’ requests from clients )
Brilliant advice – thanks!
Googling mail.app picture attachments gets you this blog entry, and I just wanted to say thanks. Worked perfectly in Snow Leopard.
thanks, that’s exactly what I was looking for!
Hi,
Just wondering if anyone knows how to combat the issue of sending email out and the text turning into an attachment that needs to be opened before being read?
Thanks in advance.
Thank you! Thank you!
Thanks for the tip – it removes a small annoyance from a great app.
Hi,
I’m using RTF for my e-mail stationary, the problem is that when I send attachments it sends it as inline image, how can I use RTF and send attachments as normal icons that would be received at the bottom of my recipients e-mails? not as an embedded image that has no link for them to download?
I have the problem of attachments being placed inside the body of my email too, but when I followed you solution, it didn’t change anything. Surely there must be a setting that allows you to say you don’t want you attachment plastered all over the body of your email.
Something really strange happens with hotmail: Once I get a message with attached pictures this way, i just can see those pictures in very small size at the bottom of the message. Already checked the ‘Image Size’ option.
Guillem’s again: Really weird… not is working correctly… Maybe the function ‘Send Windows-fiendly Attachments’ is somehow involved?
Guillem’s again: Really weird… NOW is working correctly… Maybe the function ‘Send Windows-fiendly Attachments’ is somehow involved?
Thank you for this! could not find a fix anywhere from Apple.
Thank you very much for your time in posting this. Great fix.
Fantastic! Can’t beleive that this is not a standard option.
Do you have a way of setting default text colour on new messages?
I’m having same issue others having in re to including company logo in signature & it showing up as numerous little attachments for Outlook recipients. Need a solution!
Does Outlook for Mac solve any of problems listed in this forum??
@Everyone: If this helped you, rad. If not, here’s my advice:
Send plain text emails.
Don’t attach images to every message in your signature. It’s not as cool as you think.
Or:
Use Google Apps. If that’s not available to you. Use Gmail as your email client. You can add outside email accounts to it.
2 years later, it doesn’t seem that Apple wants to pander to Outlook’s issues, nor does Microsoft care to fix their bug.
Thank you sooooooo much!!! I’ve been trying to send out resumes and it looks so unprofessional as an inline image rather than a clear “here is my resume” attachment. you reallyreally saved me!
Thanks- this was helpful.
Cheers mate! Most helpful
Thank you for this assistance – the embedded jpegs makes for difficult mail composition. I actually rung Apple on the phone and was told that there was no way of changing the inline/embedding default option.
The only drawback is that my small signature picture now appears as an icon and not as a picture.
This wasn’t an issue when I used to use Macintosh Entourage for emails, so it is frustrating that it is now a problem!
THANK YOUUUUUUUUU!
Look no further.
I’m a mac user since the beginning. The only way to handle attachments like a PC does is to use a (11 euro) program called ‘Attachment Tamer’.
http://lokiware.info/Attachment-Tamer
The unix code provided on this page only results in an icon view of the attachment. The recipient on a pc will still see an inline image, an streched one at that. On top of that, if you use a graphic in your signature, your signature will break up and it will strip the image an also attach it.
I tested Attaclent Tamer and it is what you want to correctly handle this stuff.
Kind regards,
Marc
Marc – many thanks for that – Attachment Tamer is superb! Happy new Mac user here
As I emailed the mod works good if I leave the text out of the main body of the email. However, if I type any text in the main body of email, it turns my attachment back to an embed on the receiving end. It still looks right on the mac but when I go to my PC it is embedded. Also, if I do more than 1 attachment… So one at a time with no text it’s fine but the other 2 scenarios mess it up again. Thanks for helping…
Attach Tamer is perfect!!! Thank you…
THANKS SO MUCH!!! geez that was annoying. so glad i found this blog!
Hey Micah,
Your default prefs solution does indeed do the same thing as right clicking and selecting view image as icon… But this doesn’t solve the inline image issue with MS-Outlook 2007 for example.
I’m using Mail 4.5 in OSX 10.6.8 and trying to send jpeg attachments to Outlook 2007. Mail consistently sends jpegs as inline (I can see this by viewing the message raw source (alt-cmd-U) and seeing Content-Disposition: inline; which shows up just before the image content.
I shut down mail, copied and pasted your command into terminal and restarted mail to be sure the adjusted preferences took – I didn’t reboot though.
I also selected always send windows friendly attachments and always insert attachments at end of message under the edit/attachment menu but none of this worked.
Outlook 2007 still shows the exact same results ie an image in the body of the message with no attachment and no option to save the image (although the image is much reduced in size and the proportions are distorted) – you can only select copy when right clicking the image in the body of the message and later paste into another application.
The only method that successfully put a jpeg as an attachment into Outlook 2007 was as you also later suggest to send the message as plain-text (shift-cmd-T or format/make plain text, for just this message vs switching the preferences so all messages are sent plain-text).
Just wondering what your thoughts are?
Thanks
William
Hi William, it is true that this doesn’t fix the Outlook problem. It’s annoying, but plain text seems to be the only way to send an image that Outlook treats as an attachment from Mail. It does appear to be a problem on Outlook’s end, because I have checked the results in Gmail and Thunderbird and everything comes through as expected. I wonder if sending HTML encoded emails does the trick? I may have tried it back in ’09 when I wrote this, but I don’t recall. I have to admit that I have abandoned Mail for Google Apps, because I work on both a PC and my Mac now and I refuse to use Outlook, plus the Gmail client is so damn easy.
Thank you so much.. I knew there had to be a way to get this done. Thank you Thank you!!!!
Hey! Thanks so much for this little tid bit. I was so not looking forward to switching to mac mail for this reason. So glad I found you!!!!!!!!!
Layne
Although this was posted over 2 years ago, I found it today and want to say thank you so much for sharing this information! You rock! This was incredibly helpful. Also, thanks for sharing the secrets.blacktree.com website. Already bookmarked it.
Thanks for the tip on resizing images – mine were continually reduced and I didn’t know why. But regarding the inline attachment issue, the fix in Terminal seems to work for PDF files, but not for photos. They still display in the message.
Perfect solution !!! Thanks !
First, thx for sharing this hint.
Second, for people who actually want inline- images, but hate the miniature-size osx automatically resizes to: “defaults write com.apple.mail MaxImageSize ‘large’”
Thank you so much for this… this is an option that should have been built into Mail in the first place.
I love you!
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes
I tried this fix in os X Lion for Mail 5.0 and it did not work. However, changing ‘yes’ to ‘true’ did the trick. So, for Lion users, try:
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool true
Hi Micah –
Thanks for all of your advice.
My questions is: Is there anything that can be done on the Outlook/Exchange side. My partner runs a printing press and gets 100s of attachments a day. Some of these, the ones sent using mail.app don’t show up. Since he is unable to actually mandate what app (or platform) people use to send him mail, he needs to find a workaround on his end. His staff runs outlook pushed from his Exchange server. Is there a setting in Exchange or an App or Plugin he can buy?
Thanks,
Brent
Excellent, thanks for the tip!
@Riley Thanks! Worked like a charm for me in Lion.
hi well i opened terminal now what i don’t see a defaults to write the com.apple thin in
New to Mac (and Lion.) Where, exactly, does one type the message that Riley posted above? How do you get there?
@Brent your partner might try setting Outlook to only display emails as plain text. That seems like it would take care of the issue, but I haven’t tried
@wendy Terminal is just a command line interface so you just have to paste that command into the window and hit return
@Dave Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app
Yes just stumbled across this as well, same, been driving crazy and making me look like a 7w@7 in front of my clients. Thanks Micah.
However not happy that my attachments are viewed as icons and less happy that my header is also an icon.
Tried several times to disable the original code that Micah kindly supplied pasting the disable (-bool false) into the window that automatically pops up in terminal – no joy.
Then tried pasting it into the ‘New command’ window in the ‘Shell’ header – Et voila!
Still don’t know if I’m gonna stick with crappy in-line attachments or no logo header, why you can’t spec that your logo header is in-line and everything else is an attachment is plain stooopid!
Thank you , Thank you, Thank you!
Hi Micah,
Thanks for the tip and effort. Only issue I have now is my signature which is iconized as well
. So I think I need to disable the iconisation whenever sending an attachment that is not being ‘blown’ up in my mail.
Bravo! This had been driving me nuts~
Works great, thanks! Is there a way of “1 time” to diplay the image sent , other than resetting the command line? ie: right click set, or ???
MANY, MANY THANKS for fixing the problem on my Mac Mail – the attachments going as embedded scans of pdfs…what a relief! May you receive a new Mac every year for your assistance!!!
Didn’t work for me. Now my clients are telling me the image is being squashed up into a tiny square! I’ve put the revert code in, hoping it will return to where I was…
2 1/2 years later and this is still relevant and very useful. Thanks for the info!
You’ve got to wonder when Apple will take their collective heads out of their ***es and stop forcing odd options on people. They should add options like this to the preferences pane and let people decide how they want to use things.
Thanks. You saved ton of time and frustration for me. Happy holidays.
You are awesome! This was such an easy fix.
Hey Guys,
I wonder if you can help. Is there a way you can set an email signature to be solely visible inline and not broken down and sent as an attachment? Or maybe simply masked from the recipient?
When I send an email the signature is also attached and I have had some complaint about it. I don’t see it as a big deal, but I’d rather not hear it!
appreciate your time
Louis Hicks
Liverpool England
Hello Michael,
I’m having a problem with Mac Mail v 4.5/Mac OS 10.6.8.
It seems that since I upgraded my OS to 10.6.8 a few weeks ago, whenever I click on a Mail Signature to add it to an e-mail I’m composing, the Mail app hangs, the beach ball spins forever, and I must force quit the app and start over.
I’ve placed the com.apple.mail.plist in the trash, and then restarted Mail, but no luck.
Do you have any suggestions on how I might be able to correct the problem?
Thanks very much for your help.
Bruce McCombs
Imagine my surprise. There I was, searching for just such a solution, and who in the World Wide Web pops up but the old maestro himself. Thanks, Micah. Good to see you. Enjoy the holidays!
Thanks…That has been annoying me for months…especially when I am sending stuff for business.
Thanks
Daniel
Awesome thanks!
Thanks! – this was really useful
You are SO amazing. This is the most technical thing I’ve ever done to my computer and it worked! I’d been reading for a couple of hours and every solution suggested had failed. I’m so happy with this; now I’m concerned about all those other people wandering around changing their setting to plain text, turning off make windows user friendly, etc. This is IT!
Thanks! This is such a highly-needed fix!
Hi. Will your mail app-inline-attchments fix work with Mail 5.1? Thanks
Zing.
Boom.
Ding.
Worked. Just worked, no fuss.
Sometimes Apple can be too clever for their and our own good. I looks fabulous, but makes some of us less able to serve our clients.
I lost a day on a key project just trying to find a workaround
What a relief. Thanks for this tip. I can’t believe they would bury a preference, such as this.
@Riley – Worked perfect for me in Lion as well. You all rule!!!
Ok, so this might work for apple to apple, but it screws up any graphics within a signature, including when replying to someone with a signature. It does not work for sending apple mail to anyone with Outlook. Now, after putting in the code to reset this, the signature graphic is still messed up when replying to a message. Someone also wrote, just use plain text to send attachments. They must like vanilla, and accept mediocracy.
The free tool ‘TinkerTool’ has an option to at least always show attachements as an icon instead of filling the actual mail with a image of the attachement (was happening alot with PDF’s for me, strangely in a mail with 2 PDF’s one would be an icon and one not). TinkerTool is free and is basically Apple System Settings+ without having to go into Terminal or provide your admin password or anything.
This information is still going strong. Thank you so much for the help!
Thanks man!!
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Thank you very much!!! Excellent tip to solve an annoying feature!!!!
thanks. I bought http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/17261/attachment-tamer
and it fixed my problem of embedded attachments, with tex and with signatures. Great help. Thanks again
Thanks for sharing this!
How does this in-line command differ in functionality from the app ‘Attachment Tamer’? It looks as if this ‘basically’ does the same thing more or less….and this is free! Thanks. I;m sure there are differences, but when you boil it down..?
BRILLIANT! So annoying problem with Mail, luckily found your fix. One line of text typing in Terminal and hey presto, 30 seconds later, works like a dream. I was about to invest in MacFormat recommended application, at $12!!! Thank you Micah. Note to Apple – why are you spoiling such a great experience with these really irritating ‘bugs’
I’m having this issue (did the line of code in terminal) as well as the file name are being changed, i.e. Product_File_name.jpg get changed to Image1.jpg, Image2.jpg, and so on if there are several files.
Thay you! You are a god-send. How does Apple get away with doing this to their customers? It is a mystery.
I’m having the same issue while trying to email a post with JPG attachements to a yahoo group. My attachments do not go through to the yahoo group. however, some members that receive updates from the yahoo group via individual emails do see my attachments but they see them imbedded in the message. I’ve tried your code in Terminal, set Mail to send Windows friendly and compose in plain text but still no luck.
This worked great to remove the inline viewing but the reverse, to put it back to it’s normal setting does not seem to be working properly. Any thoughts?
Thanks for this!!!
I have been using this for several months. One thing that annoys me is there are times where I do want to see the image/attachments, particularly for received emails. Is it possible to turn this off for sending and receiving separately? Any thoughts on a button for mail to turn this on and off?
This has been invaluable information re showing icons as opposed to photos in mail via iPhoto. I was tearing my hair out and wasting so much time. Must say this is the first disappointment with my new mac. Thank you so much for your generosity.
Thank you for the tip!
Thanks, I.O.U. a Beer.
One other workaround (if you’re nervous about changing the config setting) that I just tested is mixing up the file types.
Any time you’re sending images and don’t want them embedded, just add a blank text file as an attachment. Outlook grabbed the text file AND ALL THE JPGS, and processed them correctly as attachments. Just be sure in Mail they’re all inserted at the end of your message.
Thank-You
This has been driving me crazy for too long
Cheers
This does not work for me anymore, I have no idea what happened
Danke, das beseitigt ein weiteres frustrierendes feature von Lion.
For the love of all that is holy, thank you!
Thanks so much for this tip!
Thanx!!!
Thanks Micah for the solution. it really worked!!!
Hi,
I THINK i did what you nsaid. Nothing changed? If I needed to do a “Save” there was nowhere to click or anything. HELP!!
thanks for help but now cant get rid of it. I want my company logo in my email and the code to get back to the way things were does not work. any tips????
THIS IS THE VERY FIRST TIME I’M PLACING A COMMENT…
BUT REALLY I FELT SO GRATEFUL FOR FINALLY FINDING THE SOLUTION – THANK YOU!!!!!!
Thank you, I was at a birthday party last night responding to emails asking why the attachment wasn’t showing up… Anyways, this saved the day! I need to learn more Terminal tricks.
Thanks for the fix. Occasionally my client or vendor couldn’t download my attachments. This worked great! I just turn it off or on in terminal as needed.
THANKS!!!!!
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