[Macpartners] Attachment annoyances

Fri Sep 9 08:02:21 EDT 2011

Hi Marion--

This happens when an email sender puts an inline attachment in a plain
text email.  Everything above the attachment displays as expected,
everything below the attachment gets shunted into a text file.  If a user
sends you an email using Rich Text this will not happen.  You can set your
instance of Apple Mail to always compose messages in Rich Text and usually
when an email recipient responds to your message it will use the same
format.  That setting can be found in:

Mail > Preferences > Composing > Message Format > Rich Text

If you prefer to send plain text email messages and want to ensure this
does not happen to people you send messages to you can toggle the "Always
Insert Attachments at End of Message" flag.  That can be found under:

Edit > Attachments (see screen shot)

I hope this helps.

Andrew
- - -
Andrew Munchbach
Macintosh Platform Coordinator
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
IS&T | Systems Engineering | SWRT
amunch at mit.edu
+1 (617) 324-4571

On 9/8/11 8:38 PM, "Marion Leeds Carroll" <mlcar at MIT.EDU> wrote:

>Thanks, everyone -
>
>Thanks, folks!
>
>Okay, it looks like the attachment -disappearance problem is standard,
>and more trouble to fix than it's worth (if it can even be fixed, really)
>
>But nobody has addressed the other attachment problem:
>
>If anyone sends me an attachment, everything below the attachment
>(signature, but also as much of the text of the message as sits below the
>attachment) arrives attached as either a pdf or a Dreamweaver file.  To
>read the entire email, I have to open this "web page" attachment and
>translate it into the text that the sender was trying to send me - even
>if all that's actually present in the html is </body>.
>
>
>Apparently some email programs send messages as HTML instead of plain
>text.  (If Applemail has this option, I haven't seen it - although I have
>chosen to "display remote images in html messages")
>
>Am I at the mercy of emailers who send their messages as HTML? Or is
>there some way that I can receive html messages translated into text so I
>can read them?
>
>Thanks -
>
>Marion
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>On Sep 8, 2011, at 5:47 PM, Brian Bulmer wrote:
>
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>We are actually currently seeing this problem occur fairly frequently on
>all three main mail apps, but the issue is a bit different in each client.
>Apple Mail will sometimes not show the attachment originally, but it
>should show it a short time afterwards. This however can be resolved on
>the mailbox that is having the issues by highlighting the mailbox in
>question and then selecting 'Mailbox-Rebuild" form the main menu.
>Following this, quit the app, and navigate to your User/Library/Mail
>folder (example: yours may be:  Macintosh HD/Users/mlcar/Library/Mail/  )
> and delete the "Envelope Index" file. Then relaunch mail and this should
>be resolved.
>
>Outlook 2010: When attachements are found in your mailbox that it has a
>hard time decoding, it can sometimes take quite a bit of time sitting
>there on "Updating your personal folders". Simple solution here is to
>restart the outlook client. If this does not work right away, a reboot
>can resolve the matter, but it may not be a permanent solution.
>
>Outlook 2011Mac  When attachments are included in an outgoing message and
>they are not at the end of the message, or otherwise just aren't liked
>for some reason, the outgoing mail server will reject the message and ask
>if you would like to try sending the message again, which ends up failing
>each time. The solution is ironically the same for the Mac Outlook
>version, restart the client, if no luck at that point, restart the
>computer. A simple relaunch of outlook usually resolves the issue. If you
>simply cant get the email with the attachment out, delete the composed
>message and your remainder of your queued messages should be sent.
>
>For the attachments, this depends on the senders client settings. There
>are a few mail clients that if attachments are inline in the message,
>they will not encode properly, or decode on the receiving end properly.
>For Apple Mail: 
>If you put all attachments at the end of message. Apple Mail will encode
>correctly.
>So, to be friendly to other clients, esp. Windows clients. Please keep
>the following 2 options selected:
>1. Edit->Attachments->Always Send Windows Friendly Attachments
>2. Edit->Attachments->Always Insert Attachments at The End of Message
>
>
>These quirks are not extremely fun to have around, but they are
>widespread across many institutions. Mail clients and servers are in no
>means perfect, and have a difficult time interpreting mail from a
>multitude of different clients across multiple Operating Systems,
>languages, with included pictures, music, stationary, html, code
>snippets, etc. It seems that these issues are occurring more just
>recently, but I feel they're doing a fairly decent job trying to keep up.
>It all comes back to the idea that they al need to get on the same sheet
>of music in order for everyone to play nicely in the sandbox that is the
>internet. Computers aren't perfect, they're made by humans.
>
>We'll get though it and forget about it sometime later, like all the past
>great viruses and data breaches.  ;-)
>
>Just my 2 cents..
>
>Brian Bulmer
>Managed IT Services (DITR)
>Information Services and Technology, MIT
>Office: (617) 253-2163
>bbulmer at mit.edu  
> <http://ist.mit.edu/about/org/ds>http://ist.mit.edu/about/org/d
><http://ist.mit.edu/about/org/ds>s
>_______________________________________
>Please note:  MIT IS&T staff will NEVER ask you for your password, nor
>any email requesting your password information.  Please ignore any email
>messages that claim to require you to provide such information.
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>On Sep 8, 2011, at 5:06 PM, Marion Leeds Carroll wrote:
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>Hi I have a MacBook Pro for MIT, and a plain MacBook for my home life. My
>personal email goes only to my home Mac, but I allow my MIT work email
>goes to both.
>Attachments are undependable on my MIT machine: Yesterday, for instance,
>I received the same message in both places, and the attachments I needed
>arrived at "home" - but not at "MIT".  I ended up sending the message to
>"MIT" from "Home", and finally had the attachments where I needed them.
>
>More maddening:  when I got back to "MIT" today, the original email had
>the attachments that were missing yesterday.
>
>I have other attachment annoyances:  if anyone sends me an attachment,
>everything below the attachment arrives attached as either a pdf or a
>Dreamweaver file.  To read the entire email, I have to open this "web
>page" attachment and translate it into the text that the sender was
>trying to send me - even if all that's actually there in the html is
></body>.
>
>Is this something I just have to live with?  It's been going on for a
>long time, and it has caused some problems with my work... and it only
>seems to be happening in my MIT MacBook Pro, not my home MacBook.
>
>Thanks!
>Marion
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>====
>Marion Leeds Carroll
>MIT Libraries/Museum/Hillel/LVAC Web Assistant
>mlcar at mit.edu | E25-131 | 781.646.9115
>
>Music to Cure MS 
>http://singtocurems.org <http://singtocurems.org/>
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>=====
>Marion Leeds Carroll
>MIT Libraries Web Assistant
>mlcar at mit.edu
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>Music to Cure MS 
>http://singtocurems.org
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