Problem Emailing Pictures

I'm assuming you're going between two Windows computers? Same email software?

As far as troubleshooting the root problem, you should probably get a somewhat knowledgeable 3rd party involved, maybe me, if you want to PM me for an address.

I'd also jump straight to checking out how the attachments are being encoded, and maybe play with that a bit (MIME, Binhex, UUencode...)

As far as getting AROUND the problem, you can always use a 3rd party image host to get the images between your computers (Imageshack or equiv). You may also be able to enclose them in a ZIP, but since you're having attachment problems, I wouldn't expect that to work.

Good luck.

 

maybe try using a photobucket account instead? if he uploads to photobucket i'm pretty sure you can save on your computer if he allows it in the account settings.

 

Well, if you need a 3rd party to join in on the testing, I'm available. I use a Mac also, albeit an older OS9 system.

Good luck!

 

Here is a selection from an article I have just written about email reliability (sorry for its length!):

Email is simply not a good way to transfer files. In the beginning, email was originally designed for ascii text only - "attachments" had to be sent via FTP (File Transport Protocol) and you needed a separate application for this.

In recent years (like the last 10), email applications began to allow attachments as a convenience, converting the files to ascii text. Email attachments still have to be encoded by your ISP to travel as email and the larger the attachment, the more work a server has to do to to convert the files. The larger the attachment(s), the more opportunity there is for the file(s) to become corrupted or not make it at all to the intended recipient.

Many ISPs are now reducing the attachment size limits as their servers become clogged from the encoding and scanning of a growing number of large attachments.

The further a message has to travel, the more servers it will pass through and the less likely it is to make it through if it has a large attachment. So you may be able to send a large attachment to a friend from one side of a city to the other but you may not be able to send a 5 MB file to a friend in Brazil. And you may find that sometimes it works and sometimes it does not depending on the route the email follows - something that you cannot control with email.

Now that single file sizes are so big (one digital photo can be over 5MB) and ISPs are getting more aggressive trying to reduce spam and viruses etc, sending large files via email is becoming both a hassle for email admins to deal with and more expensive for ISPs. So ISPs are imposing restrictions on attachments passing through their servers - often without letting their users know.

So - if you insist on sending large files via email, be prepared for them not to make it, and consider yourself lucky if they do. If you need to send large files reliably use FTP (slow, tricky to set up but reliable), or the file transfer feature in Skype (fast and pretty reliable) or an online service like pando.com or yousendit.com. Always compress files to protect against corruption on route.

I hope this helps - you can test between different computers and users but the routes email travels are always changing and your pictures will be subject to all kinds of scanning and encoding abuse as they pass through different servers. Best not to use email!

 

rock on, thunderbird! i love that program.