Messages With Pictures

Have you ever clicked on a message to open it and then waited for several minutes while that little spinner goes round and round trying to download the attachments? 

I recently received an email that contained twenty-nine pictures, and it took just under five minutes to download.  In the meantime I couldn't perform any other functions on the computer, so I was forced to sit and watch the spinning circle.  That wasn't the first time it has happened, but it was bothersome enough to spur me into writing a column about it.

If you are a savvy sender and you already know how to attach and forward pictures, cartoons and other graphics, then please ignore this column.  My goal is to reach out to those who aren't sure how to do it, or just plain "don't know."

There are three basic rules to forwarding attachments:

• Be stingy - don't send too many in one message
• If your mail server provides it, send graphics in the body of the message, not as attachments that have to be clicked on to open them
• Send the message to yourself first to "test" it whenever possible

Let's cover these three in more depth.  When I say "be stingy" I mean you should try to only send ten or less pictures or pages in one message.  If you need to send more, break the message up and send it in parts.  Some pictures can be reduced in size so that they don't take up as much apace.  A good rule is that if it is larger than one gigabyte or has more than 1080 pixels on the largest side, it needs to be reduced if possible.  Right-clicking on the picture will give you that information, and there are programs that you can use to do the reduction very quickly. 

A good rule of thumb is that, if the image won't fit on your screen without a slider bar to view it, it is probably too large.  Any picture can be reduced in size by left-clicking on it, placing the cursor over a corner until a slanted arrow appears and moving your cursor toward the center of the picture to make the image smaller.  When you release the cursor with your mouse, the picture will stabilize at that size and the slider bar should disappear.  Sometimes you will even see what size the image is in pixel counts as you move the arrow.

Rule 2:  My two mail servers provide a way to include the picture or attachment right in the body of the message.  Yours probably has that option too.  Comcast has a box at the bottom of the attachment pop up screen that you can check to "Show images in message body." In Gmail, putting your cursor where you want to display the image and clicking on the icon for pictures will enable you to place it in the body for viewing with the message text. You might need to experiment if you have a different server, but there will be something similar in there to include images in the message body.  Nobody should have to click on an attachment to open and view the image.

When you want to send pictures from some other document or message, you must first right-click on that image to get a pop up menu with "Save Image As..." or some form of that command.  Left-click on that command and place the image in your Pictures file.

(I created a folder labeled "Forwards" to hold those images temporarily until I choose to delete them)  After you have saved all of the images you want to include as attachments, follow the above steps to insert them into the body of your message.

Rule 3 is something I try to do with messages that have images which I am uncertain will go through for viewing.  Sometimes I want to send a message that already has attached images in the message body, but I'm not sure it will transmit those images.  I simply send it to myself first to see what comes through.  If it works, then I add the addresses for those I want to send it to (always in bcc:) and resend it to them.  If it doesn't come through, then I can rework it, using the above techniques, and forward it.  Alternately, I sometimes create my own message from scratch, copying and pasting text and attaching the images as above, because it is usually easier than forwarding someone else's message.

I hope this little tutorial has been helpful to you, but if you have any questions that I can answer, or if I can clarify any of the instructions for you, don't hesitate to let me know