Pix won't "forward"

jjoker · Post by **jjoker** » September 30th, 2007, 5:20 pm

Sometimes, not always, pix that I have received
inline in an email will not forward properly. The text
in the email forwards OK but the pix do not at all. I've
looked at all the settings and see nothing that controls
this phenomenon. Any ideas on this one?
Tnx, Jim

Post by **rsx11m** » October 1st, 2007, 12:46 pm

I assume that you have your forward mode set to "inline" rather than "as attachment" (Tools > Options > Composition tab). If this is the case, check your Account Settings (under the Tools menu) and see if "Compose message in HTML" is set in the Composition & Addressing tab of this account. Also, make sure that View > Message Body As > Original HTML is selected. Only then, forwarding inline will be in HTML, and will also include the embedded images of the original message.

When forwarding as attachment, or if the images are themselves "true" attachments rather then embedded images, they should forward in either case.

jjoker · Post by **jjoker** » October 1st, 2007, 9:56 pm

Tnx for your reply. I looked at all settings that you suggested and everything is set the way
you have recommended. I did a bit more characterization of the problem and here is what
I found. When I receive an email with an attachment that is labeled ForwardedMessage.eml,
I can double-click the .eml file and it will open, showing the pix. But, if I hit the Forward button
to send them on to someone else, it is those pix that do not appear in the forwarded email. There
are box outlines of where they should be, but no pix. All other "regular" attachments, such as
filetypes .wmv, .jpg, .pps, etc., all work normally(forward OK), no problem. Tnx again.

Post by **rsx11m** » October 2nd, 2007, 5:58 am

If the e-mail you received is already contained in an .eml attachment, it will be treated as a regular attachment itself when forwarding, i.e., reattached to the message you are composing. Consequently, it will show up as "whatever.eml" in your window, regardless of your forward settings.

Now, about your images, they should be still there! They are just nested within that .eml attachment in a second level, thus don't show up as separate attachments when composing. This is making things a little trickier on the receiving end as not all e-mail clients understand and handle these messages properly. If you have a copy of the e-mails you sent out in your "Sent" folder (or Bcc'ed yourself), you should be able to verify that the pictures are part of the message (you have to check View > Display Attachments Inline to see those).

Just to make sure, are you running McAfee antispam? There have been reports that certain settings cause e-mails received to show up as attachments rather than true messages, but those were usually related to automated responses without formatting or pictures, thus it may not apply.

elliemae71 · Post by **elliemae71** » October 2nd, 2007, 8:20 am

I am having similar difficulties forwarding any type of photos or graphics - I have checked all my settings as described in this post, and they are correct. I have attempted to forward to myself at other addresses, and the pics DO NOT forward - either inline or as an attachment. They are simply gone! This is so tragic, I like T-Bird and I really don't want to go back to Outlook but I can't stand not being able to forward anything anymore.

Post by **rsx11m** » October 2nd, 2007, 8:27 am

Do you have a copy in your Sent folder, and do the images show up there? If yes, your provider may remove those attachments for some reason.

elliemae71 · Post by **elliemae71** » October 2nd, 2007, 8:40 am

The copy in my Sent folder also has no images. From what I can tell from other topics in the forums this may be a bug in T-Bird, I have tried to "reply" instead of forwarding as some had suggested but this doesn't work either. The images are there when I receive the message so my ISP is not blocking them - I have remote images blocked for the inbox but these are not remote images, they are in emails I receive.

Post by **rsx11m** » October 2nd, 2007, 8:51 am

elliemae71: Well, in that case I don't know. You may want to watch the other threads you mentioned, which appear to be more specific to your problem.

jjoker · Post by **jjoker** » October 2nd, 2007, 9:34 am

Yes, forwarding the whatever.eml works as expected. My problem happens when I
double-click on the .eml file, open it up to view the pix, then hit the "forward" button.
Then I just get the blank boxes in the forwarded email instead of the pix. I just tried
it again, checking all the settings, and looking at my "sent" messages to see if I could
view the pix ... and could not. Oh, I am not running McAfee here - using Norton. The
reason I want to forward the pix themselves is so that recipients don't have to drill down
into several layers of forwarded emails to finally get to the pix. Thanks. BTW, I think my
problem is different than that of elliemae71, after reading her posts.

Post by **rsx11m** » October 2nd, 2007, 11:57 am

Ok, now I think I see what you mean. I did the following:

Take a normal message which has an image or other file attached
Forward this to yourself as attachment
Open the .eml attachment returned with that, picture looks fine
Forward the message shown in the .eml window to yourself again inline, the picture appears in the attachment box
The message forwarded in such way comes back with a broken attachment and no picture.

Yes, this looks like a bug. The same thing happens with non-image items, e.g., PDF attachments within the .eml; they are not forwarded correctly either if the message is extracted.

I've noticed some other strange behavior before when you open .eml files. They show up like "normal" messages in the message window then, but certain things don't quite work as expected. Most likely this is because those attachments are not real messages, thus using the same mechanisms (in this case forwarding with reattaching attachments of the forwarded message) may end up causing problems.

Post by **rsx11m** » October 2nd, 2007, 4:38 pm

jjoker: I have made some further testing when the attachments within an attached message are forwarded and when not. First of all, it appears that the issue only occurs when I directly forward from my Inbox. Also, I'm using an IMAP server, thus the message is not downloaded completely when opening it to start with. When I first move or copy the message to a local folder, it is completely downloaded from the server. When opening the .eml attachment of such a local copy and forwarding it, the attachment is sent completely, thus no problem here.

Can you give some more details if you are using a POP or IMAP server, and if the issue occurs only in your Inbox or any other folder as well?

jjoker · Post by **jjoker** » October 2nd, 2007, 5:27 pm

rsx11m: OK, I am using a POP server and I tried saving the message to another folder
(other than Inbox). I had exactly the same results when forwarding from the other folder.
In your 10:57 AM message above, under #4, when I forward the pix (obtained by opening
whatever.eml and they appeared inline), the "forward window" shows box outlines (inline)
instead of the pix. There is no attachment associated with that attempt to forward. But in
any case, it looks like we're both seeing the bug, perhaps in a little different format from
each other.

Post by **rsx11m** » October 2nd, 2007, 7:21 pm

Ok, I guess I'm making progress here! Your hints with the "no pix in forward window" and "no attachment associated" prompted me to try it with embedded, not attached images in a forwarded HTML message attachment. If the .eml attachment is opened separately and reforwarded inline, the following happens, starting with #4 of my previous post:

The compose window opens in HTML mode, headers are visible in the header table of the forwarded part, the text appears, but the embedded image is marked "broken"
when received, only the text appears visible, not the embedded picture!
If I look into View > Message Source, it depends from where the message was forwarded:
- from IMAP, I see a link "<img src=imap:...>" instead of any embedded image
- from a local folder, the forwarded .eml message has been completely attached as message/rfc822 attachment, including text and images, where the latter doesn't show up since the top-level MIME type is "multipart/related" rather than "multipart/mixed"
if reforwarded as attachment, the message has essentially the same structure as the 2nd point in the previous bullet item, but appears correct now.

Bottomline: These are two different bugs, one related to an incomplete forwarding of a separated attached message from an IMAP server, the other concerning a wrong encoding of a reforwarded message in inline mode.

There is a bug report (#204350) pending for bugs related to the forwarded message window, these findings might be worth a comment on that one... :-)

jjoker · Post by **jjoker** » October 2nd, 2007, 10:42 pm

Wow, nice piece of detective work! I'm afraid you've gone beyond my technical
ability in this matter ... I'm a hardware guy! I looked at the link to #204350 and
fell deeper into the quagmire. So it sounds like people who can fix it ... know
about it. Time for me to bow out as it's beyond me at this point. Tnx for all your
help and time spent on it!

Post by **rsx11m** » October 3rd, 2007, 6:28 am

You are welcome, and I'll go ahead then and add a comment on this for the developers' attention. Fortunately, I don't need this reforwarding feature too frequently, but it certainly would be good to see it fixed.

Pix won't "forward"

Pix won't "forward"

Forwarding Pics/Graphics