Emails from people who use Macs

[Wombat]

I normally use Windows 7 PCs, and normally receive emails via Opera email client and POP3.  My main email  account is with Virgin, which is accessible either by a mail client (in my case Opera) or via Virgin's crap webmail interface, which is "powered by Google". If folk who use Macs send me an email with an attachment, I don't see it, and its not on the Virgin webmail as an attachment.  The result is that I receive a big email, but only text is visible, by mail client or webmail.

Before I say to my two mac owning friends "For fucks sake learn to attach a file, stupid!" is there anything I could do about this?  Do macs encode emails strangely?  I've been using more or less the same tools for years, and in the last year or so this has started to crop up with my Mac owning friends.  I can recall Steve Jobs vowing to smash Google, but sending emails that can't be properly read by google powered mail systems, seems an odd way to do it...  Strangely, if he sends the same email to my Gmail account, I can view it on the Gmail webmail thingy, but not via a POP3 mail client.

Its pissing me right orf, it is...  what was that about macs "just working"?  yeah, in their own sweet way...

Any clues?

[Rhys W]

Yeah - Virgin is crap. Nothing to do with Macs.

[Wombat]

So why is it only emails sent from Macs that have missing attachments?

[Rhys W]

So why is it only emails sent from Macs that have missing attachments?

Because Virgin still think that Windows is the only operating system in the world, and are too lazy to test their system with anything else?

Seriously, I've used Macs, Windows and Virgin on a daily basis for years and my money's on Virgin. Their Mac support has been tragically bad since I've been with them.

[Jaded]

Make sure the Mac users are ticking the "send windows friendly attachments" box that appears at the bottom of the dialog box that they use to select the file they are sending.

That might help.

[Feanor]

That's the thing I hate about user abstraction.

A check-box that says dumb shit like 'windows friendly'.

WTF does that actually, technically, mean?

Dear Mr Apple, plz to be providing a proper description of what this means.

[Afasoas]

Not sure it's a virgin thing.
It think it's a MIME thing.

I had a similar problem. Ran a photography competition for local arts festival. Entries received via email. Email hosted with 123-reg. Microsoft Outlook used as mail client.

With the entries from Mac users, I could see the image in the email. It was an in-line image and using outlook I save the image like I could with other attachments. On closer inspection, I realised the emails were text as oppose to HTML and the images were not attachments sent with the email but a string of base64 text with a related content Id (CID) included in the email source code, as oppose to an attachment.

I found a work around of opening the in 123-reg's web-based email client, I was able to at least right click on the image where it was displayed within the email and using the web browser, "save image as..." in order to download it.


All based my crude understanding, might not necessarily be correct...

[Wombat]

I do indeed think its a MIME thing.  There is no attachment, the images are apparently in the body of the email, and when I "view source" there is vast amounts of meaningless text shown.  The fact that if the same email is sent via Gmail it shows the images on the webmail view, but if I download that gmail via a pop3 account, as my netbook does, no images, puzzles me, but then I just use computers and expect them to work, rather than study them!

[Woofage]

I do indeed think its a MIME thing.  There is no attachment, the images are apparently in the body of the email, and when I "view source" there is vast amounts of meaningless text shown.  The fact that if the same email is sent via Gmail it shows the images on the webmail view, but if I download that gmail via a pop3 account, as my netbook does, no images, puzzles me, but then I just use computers and expect them to work, rather than study them!

You can extract the text and re-constitute the attachment. I recall having to do this sometimes, oh, 20 or so years ago .

[Woofage]

Make sure the Mac users are ticking the "send windows friendly attachments" box that appears at the bottom of the dialog box that they use to select the file they are sending.

In case I (or others) run into this problem, does that mean if an Apple computer user wants to send me an e-mail attachment I have to tell them first what type of OS I am using? I don't use Windows myself, but we do have Windows computers in the household. If an attachment is sent "windows friendly" can I pick it up (ie without resorting to un-uuencoding etc) on an Android or Apple tablet (or smart phone) or Linux computer? Are some mail-readers more "compatible" than others?

[ian]

Make sure the Mac users are ticking the "send windows friendly attachments" box that appears at the bottom of the dialog box that they use to select the file they are sending.

In case I (or others) run into this problem, does that mean if an Apple computer user wants to send me an e-mail attachment I have to tell them first what type of OS I am using? I don't use Windows myself, but we do have Windows computers in the household. If an attachment is sent "windows friendly" can I pick it up (ie without resorting to un-uuencoding etc) on an Android or Apple tablet (or smart phone) or Linux computer? Are some mail-readers more "compatible" than others?

Well, to be fair attaching files to emails was a kludge from day 1, it just became a spectacularly popular kludge. No one intended email as a mechanism for sending files. The 'windows friendly' just dealt with the resource fork information, in practice, I don't think it much matters, it just means other Mac users didn't get the information if you ticked it. I doubt they much cared, it'll rebuild on opening. It's the default anyway.

It really does just work, I send emails all the time. I receive emails all the time. They have attachments. Sad though it is and believe me I'm trying to get rid of them, but I do know people who use Windows. In fact, because the numbnuts in our mothership IT have made it impossible to transfer files over my LAN between my Mac and work PC when on the VPN, that's my usual extravagant method of moving files between machines. They get a trip to Limerick, or if they're lucky, a quick tour of Minnesota. Lucky things.

If files disappear, it's usually the fault of the recipient system. Either because they screw up or overzealous security sends the files to the quarantine gulag that no one knows about.

[Woofage]

The 'windows friendly' just dealt with the resource fork information, in practice, I don't think it much matters, it just means other Mac users didn't get the information if you ticked it. I doubt they much cared, it'll rebuild on opening. It's the default anyway.

So the check box should be thought of operating the wrong way and really means "are you sending this to an old Apple computer that might have a problem with resource forks"? I must admit I'd never heard of a resource fork before this thread even though I've used all kinds of different OSs. It did seem odd that it mattered so much as I would have thought, as you wrote above, that the receiving computer would sort out whatever it needed in that respect based on the OS on which it was running.

If files disappear, it's usually the fault of the recipient system. Either because they screw up or overzealous security sends the files to the quarantine gulag that no one knows about.

So the OP's e-mail reader is likely broken to some degree?

[ian]

All operating and file systems stored metadata about files in some format or other. Macs traditionally did this with resource forks (I think now deprecated for extended attributes, which are more complex). Macs have always made good use of file metadata, which is why the spotlight search is one of the best things about a Mac. Anyway, the upshot is that metadata is stored in different ways on different systems. I'm sure there are arguments about relative utility.

Anyway, it's metadata, it's useful rather than vital. I doubt this is the problem in the OP. I think the quirkiness belongs to Virgin. It ought to handle things, but to be fair, email attachments are a kind of computer voodoo. Like I say, I pass files back and forth all the time via email, and it's fine.

[Biggsy]

Long shot:  Might it help to use IMAP instead of POP 3?  (If Virgin provide IMAP anyway?).

[Cudzoziemiec]

That's the thing I hate about user abstraction.

A check-box that says dumb shit like 'windows friendly'.

WTF does that actually, technically, mean?

Dear Mr Apple, plz to be providing a proper description of what this means.

I've no idea WTF it means, but why should it even be there? A system which requires you to know whether your recipient is using windows, apple or whatever is not at all user friendly.

[ian]

That's the thing I hate about user abstraction.

A check-box that says dumb shit like 'windows friendly'.

WTF does that actually, technically, mean?

Dear Mr Apple, plz to be providing a proper description of what this means.

I've no idea WTF it means, but why should it even be there? A system which requires you to know whether your recipient is using windows, apple or whatever is not at all user friendly.

It doesn't really. I think 99% of Mac users are blissfully ignorant of the option's very existence. It only seems to linger to keep old Mac users happy. Presumably there's an inner circle of turtle-neck wearing Mac users who only send cryptic Mac file formats to one another, probably the plans for some ineffably nefarious evil. However, if we knew about them, they'd need to kill us. Probably clicking the option is how they find out we know. I'm pretty sure that anyone who specifies windows-unfriendly attachments ends up dead one way or another. I'd leave it alone.

[Wombat]

I'm not being clear enough here, sorry.  There is NO attachment to lose.  The images are somehow in the body of the email, so its not a case of not being able to decode an attachment.  I never used to have this issue with Mac users sending emails, I get thousands of emails, many with attachments, from all sorts of people.  It seems as if there is some change in recent mac email procedure which is the agent of this problem.  Both of my regular senders with macs have had new machines in the last 6 months or so, and since then I never get their images.  One of them, they used to appear oddly, with entirely different filenames to what they were sent as, but I just renamed them and they were fine, but no more.  Neither of these senders are idiots, and both long term Mac users.  One is a journalist and magazine editor, and the other an engineer who used to work for some French mobile telephony business, but is now an engineering business in his own right.  One uses Macace.net, and the other uses Gmail normally, after giving up on French email services.

We have also found a silly but infuriating issue re "OSes".  We both use Turbocad.  I use Turbocad for Windows, he uses Turbocad for Mac. We cannot exchange files, there is no conversion utility between .tcm and tcw files!  Bangs head on desk...

I really don't want to have to change email provider, when Virgin is far and away the best solution for me on speed and price, if the issue is solvable by other methods.

[Biggsy]

I really don't want to have to change email provider, when Virgin is far and away the best solution for me on speed and price, if the issue is solvable by other methods.

Hold on.  Gmail (amongst others) is free and fast as anything, and can be used via your Opera email client and your Virgin ISP.  The only big deal is having to tell everyone your new email address.

For extra storage and bells and whistles (at a price), I recommend Fastmail.  Such a comprehensive and reliable service is worth paying for, I think.  It happens to be owned by Opera as well.

[David Martin]

There is no such thing as an 'attachment' which is somehow stapled onto the arse end of an email with some magic electronic steel pin. What you get is a message which is MIME encoded. Which stands for something like multipart internet message extensions. It puts all the bits in their on little part of the email message, encoded as necessary (hence the base 64 gobbledygook) so that it makes it's way down the intertubes without being eaten by goblins or rewriting the fabric of the universe along the way.

Some mail clients will automagically deconvolute different types of content into 'inline' images (they aren't inline, they just look like it), others keep them as attachments. There may well be separate copies of the email in plain text or in markup. And it all automagically looks nice and simple, and different depending on how you view it. Most of the time it just works. Except of course when it doesn't.

[ian]

To be clear: the images are there in the body of the email but just aren't appearing as attachments? Can't you right click and save them?

As David says, there's no magic involved in sending an attachment, it's really the receiving end that decides how to display. What I suspect is happening is that they're sending you messages in rich text which is neither plain text nor HTML but does allow image placement, and it may be that Opera is simply honouring this. Mac Mail allows for plain text or rich text and the setting cascades to future messages to and from an individual. Previously you may have been receiving plain text which has no image placement, so any images would merely appear as attachments.

So, you could ask them to send plain text or there's another option in edit > attachments > always insert attachments at the end of the message.

[David Martin]

Or your client is set to display plain text only so anything else woudl be seen as an attachment.

[Wombat]

I really don't want to have to change email provider, when Virgin is far and away the best solution for me on speed and price, if the issue is solvable by other methods.

Hold on.  Gmail (amongst others) is free and fast as anything, and can be used via your Opera email client and your Virgin ISP.  The only big deal is having to tell everyone your new email address.

For extra storage and bells and whistles (at a price), I recommend Fastmail.  Such a comprehensive and reliable service is worth paying for, I think.  It happens to be owned by Opera as well.

I do already have a gmail address, which is not widelty known, but one of these senders has sent to it, and the images appear if viewing on Gmail webmail "interface" but if downloaded by an email client, they are not there.  Gmail does not show any attachment, but the images are in the body of the email (webmail only).   My netbook is configured to download gmail emails, as I tend to use it as my "mobile" email address, when I don't want to be bothered with the mainstream stuff which goes to my NTL/Virgin address.

[Wombat]

To be clear: the images are there in the body of the email but just aren't appearing as attachments? Can't you right click and save them?

As David says, there's no magic involved in sending an attachment, it's really the receiving end that decides how to display. What I suspect is happening is that they're sending you messages in rich text which is neither plain text nor HTML but does allow image placement, and it may be that Opera is simply honouring this. Mac Mail allows for plain text or rich text and the setting cascades to future messages to and from an individual. Previously you may have been receiving plain text which has no image placement, so any images would merely appear as attachments.

So, you could ask them to send plain text or there's another option in edit > attachments > always insert attachments at the end of the message.

They are only appearing in the body of the email in Gmail (webmail only, not via email client).  Neither Gmail nor Virgin mail acknowledge the existence of an attachment, even when looking directly onto the Virgin webserver via their webmail interface.  Definitely not a mail client issue as its independent of them.  I think I shall ask them both to stick to plain text!  I'm of the opinion that emails should be plain text anyway, and if you want to send some fancy document, then do it as an attachment which the recipient can open in their programme of choice.  More sense for mobile devices, too.

[geraldc]

Are they sending photos straight from iPhoto? If you click 'share as' and select email, it automatically tries to format the whole email in HTML with the picture embedded. Just tell them to click on the option to share it as an attachment.

[Wombat]

Sorry for non-response, bin busy....

Not sure about the straight from iPhoto bit, I'll check for sure when I visit him in 10 days.  According to Virgin's webserver, there are no attachments, and the images do not appear if I read it on their webmail thing.  Apart from these 2 senders, the presence of attachments is always obvious on the virgin webmail interface.

In response to Ian, I can't click on them in the body of the mail because they do not appear to be there.  I'm not actually fussed about saving this latest crop, I just wanted to see what he'd been up to with his 3D printer.

I'm convinced that changing email client won't help because they aren't visible on Virgin webmail anyway.  looks like he'll have to stick to my gmail address and I'll only have to read them on the tablet.  Silly.