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General discussion

Email attachments from Mail to PC don't work

Feb 7, 2010 10:50PM PST

We have a Mac user trying to send attachments in an email to a PC recipient. She is using Apple's Mail app. Whenever she tries to attach a file - a JPEG for instance - it seems to attach as an inline graphic rather than a normal attachment. The PC recipient gets no paperclip symbol on their end, and can't do anything with it. I'm assuming this may be a preference setting in Mail, but can't seem to find where to change it. Turning on the "Send Windows-friendly attachments" seems to make no difference.

Specs:
G5 PowerPC Mac
OSX Tiger - 10.4.11

Thanks in advance for any insight into this problem.

Discussion is locked

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Apple Mail
Feb 8, 2010 1:39AM PST

when this happens, it is best to educate the PC user and explain how to save the attachment even if it does not have a paperclip showing.

Just Right Click on the image and choose the option to save the image.

The "Windows Friendly Attachment" thing in Mail is not for this, it just makes sure that the attachments have the required extension attached to it when it is sent. (like .doc, .jpg, etc.)

You could also take a look at how the Mac user is attaching the attachments.
Mail will tend to put the attachment at the current cursor position which could be at the bottom of the email by the time the user decides to make the attachment.
See if attaching first, before composing the text, makes any difference.

P

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found the problem!
Feb 8, 2010 1:58AM PST

After some additional experimenting, we discovered that her signature was causing the problem. Her composing preferences were set for .rtf, rather than plain-text. Once we changed it to plain text, it worked. So now she has a boring signature, but her attachments will work.

I wonder if this is something that was fixed in Leopard or Snow Leopard's version of Mail. We can upgrade her as far as Leopard (but not any farther since it isn't an Intel Mac).

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(NT) You could try html as the email format and see what happens
Feb 8, 2010 3:27AM PST
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Email attachments from Mail to PC don't work
Jun 28, 2012 3:52PM PDT

Thanks for the effort to fix this problem. When I right click on the jpeg on the receiving PC's email app, it only gives the option of "copy." It doesn't regard the jpeg as an attachment. I can get an attachment recognized if I pull a photo from my Aperture app on my iMac and then send it as an attachment from the desktop. But that's a pain. Any other ideas?

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Check to see if the Mac user is checking the box
Jun 28, 2012 10:03PM PDT

marked, "send Windows Friendly attachments"

P