Help! Photo attachments are “inside” the email

A reader asked me to help her with an email problem she’s having. Her husband’s on a Mac at home and she’s on a Windows PC at work. Whenever he sends her a photo it doesn’t show up as an attachment but rather, embedded in the email itself, which prevents her from saving it. What to do?

A reader asked me to help her with an email problem she's having. Her husband's on a Mac at home and she's on a Windows PC at work. Whenever he sends her a photo it doesn't show up as an attachment but rather, embedded in the email itself, which prevents her from saving it. What to do?

Yes, depending on what software packages are used for email between the Mac and PC, you might experience odd glitches like this.

If you both don't want to set up a free web-based mail account to solve this problem — such as Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! Mail — which would be the easiest solution, then try this trick I picked up somewhere:

Before you or your husband send photos back and forth, rename them to something like Kids.bab or Kids.cac or any other made-up extension to follow the period. When attached to an email it'll show up as an attachment no problem — and not as a photo embedded in the message itself. Now, when received, simply download the file and rename it to Kids.jpg (or whatever the original file was) and you'll be able to view it on your PC. Voila!

Filed Under: Computers & Software