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What causes all my emails with embedded media to always be downloaded with the media broken or removed? How do I solve it?

  • 6 replies
  • 7 have this problem
  • 105 views
  • Last reply by Lettuce

Lettuce
Lettuce

Whenever people send me emails with embedded videos or pictures, the email always comes in without the media. It will have just the empty box outline where it supposed to be with a tiny broken page icon in the top left-hand corner.

I can't seem to find the cause and the solution and this has been happening for a few years already. Does it have anything to do with my account still being POP and not IMAP? What are the possible reasons and their solutions? Please help, thank you.

Whenever people send me emails with embedded videos or pictures, the email always comes in without the media. It will have just the empty box outline where it supposed to be with a tiny broken page icon in the top left-hand corner. I can't seem to find the cause and the solution and this has been happening for a few years already. Does it have anything to do with my account still being POP and not IMAP? What are the possible reasons and their solutions? Please help, thank you.
Attached screenshots

Chosen solution

Someone sent me a message with a broken image. Here's what I have found.

There are two factors which control the display of remote images in email:

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All Replies (6)

duggabe
duggabe

I am not an expert in this area, but I think I might know what is going on. There is a difference between an 'embedded' picture and an 'attached' picture.

An embedded picture has a link to the actual picture. If the link is to a site which is not accessible (such as the sender's own computer) then you will get a broken link.

An attached picture is the actual picture file (.jpg, etc.) so you can always view it. If you check 'Display Attachments Inline', then when you scroll down through the email, the attachments will show up.

So, bottom line: If the sender embeds a picture, it needs to link to a publicly accessible URL. Otherwise, it needs to be attached.

Lettuce
Lettuce Question owner

Your explanation seems to run along those lines. So I assume that if I don't see the usual list of attachments at the end of the email, it means they are embedded images.

Not knowing where to find "Display Attachments Inline", I searched help which sent me to the online page "https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/filelink-large-attachments" that has relevant explanations to yours.

The catch is that solution suggestions there is confusing to me, so I intend to just leave it for now. Thanks.

duggabe
duggabe

Check toolbar -> 'View' -> Display Attachments Inline to see the attachments below your email message.

If you were sent an embedded image via Filelink, there should be a message and link to it in place of the image.

Another user has a similar problem: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1047941 but I don't think I helped him much either :(

duggabe
duggabe

If you don't have any privacy or security concerns, could you forward one of the emails to me and I'll take a look at the source code to see if I see any problems? Send to barry@barryduggan.info

duggabe
duggabe

Chosen Solution

Someone sent me a message with a broken image. Here's what I have found.

There are two factors which control the display of remote images in email:

Lettuce
Lettuce Question owner

I performed both procedures and it solved the issue for a few emails. Now it has started to have broken images again and my settings are still at HTML and I have already fixed remote content to "allowed" for that sender.

I've even tried 'enable remote content in messages' in options but it doesn't help. What is the next step I can try?