Invisible Photos in My Emails?

[Jinx]

A friend of mine sends me pictures supposedly embedded in his emails (as opposed to attachments I can actually open), but my emails always come in blank. I mean, there's not even an "X" symbol typically used to show there's an image there the PC cannot open. What's the deal with this? Is there any setting (or option) I can change in Outlook Express to view his photos?

Has anyone else experienced something similar? The odd thing is he sends out his photos to a huge distribution list of friends (or relatives). Surely, I cannot be the only one who cannot view his stuff!

I once asked him about this...I'll see if I can dig up his reply as why this may be. I recall it didn't mean much to me, and he is an IT guru. So, maybe someone on the SD can put it in simplest terms. - Jinx

[Zeldar]

The emails I get like you describe have come from people who I'm pretty sure have no idea how to attach or embed a picture. If the pictures are from some software that I don't have a way of reproducing, I will get a warning that my email handler can't reproduce it.

About half the time, the picture shows up unassisted. The other half I have to click on the little attachment icon to get my image software to view it. Every now and then this second option will not work.

But when I see text to suggest a picture is there, and I see no evidence of it, I just assume the sender overlooked attaching or embedding the thing. If the picture seems relevant or important I will reply to the email and mention that I didn't get the picture. If not, I just delete the message.

Other than that, I can't help you. Sorry.

[Jinx]

Thanks for trying...I'll have to dig for his emailed explanation and post it here to see if it makes any more sense to the SDopers.

[Colophon]

My first thought was that you have an option set to block images in HTML emails. I have that setting active on both my web email accounts (Yahoo and Gmail) as it helps prevent spammers seeing that your account is active (they embed blank, uniquely numbered, images in emails so they can track whether the message is read).

I just had a quick look on Outlook Express, though, and I can't find a similar setting. Anyone?

[Colophon]

OK, that's probably not it, as apparently if that were so you should still get the red Xs and get a message saying that image download was blocked.

[GuanoLad]

I have my Outlook to always display incoming emails as text only, and when they do and they are actually HTML emails, a link appears to ask if I want to change it to HTML, then when it does it asks if I want to download images.

I hate Outlook.