HTML image disappearing act

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I have Office 2003 with Windows XP SP3 installed. Was running IE6 until a couple weeks ago – now IE7.
I do not have all the updates – corporate controls that – go figure.

The problem is that images I copy and then paste into HTML emails most often show as a black-bordered square with a red ‘x’ in the center. Often these images are copied from a website, email, or a screen capture. I use a clipboard manager called ClipMate.

When I paste an image into a new email, and it shows as this strange box, if I send it to others, they see the image. I can also paste the same image into a Word document, or a graphical editor such as IrfanView – all with no problem. If I change the email format to rich text, it always pastes properly.

I receive a lot of HTML emails from newsletters and internal email. I have received a couple emails since this problem started in Nov 2009 from an internal source that displayed the embedded image as the same square. Sometimes when I forward these emails, I can read them in the same version of Outlook at home. If I try to print them out, or do an print screen to capture the display window (or a segment of the window) I see the same thing in the new clip.

I have emails stored in an archive folder that had these images in them, and when the pasting was was working properly (displaying the image), those emails also displayed properly when they hadn’t before.

This whole problem began last November when our company changed their name in the US. They had their name in the window title bar as “Internet Explorer provided by xxxxxxxxxx”. When they changed their name, this started (in the same general time frame). I had been off for awhile and they also had some other bug fix “pushes” around the same time. I may have done a Java update around the same time – can’t remember. No one else seems to have this difficulty, however, one coworker forwarded one of my emails with a couple Dilberts pasted in. He could see the Dilbert when he got it, but when he went to forward, one of the strips (there were a couple) showed as half a strip, while the other strips showed the all too familiar red ‘x’ box for each of the other images.

I have been in contact with our corporate IT people, but they are in Georgia and I am in PA. The last one was in Mass. No one can figure this out. I was told to uninstall IE6 and re-install it, which I did but it didn’t fix the problem. I even recently upgraded to IE7 for other reasons and it didn’t fix the problem either (doesn’t have the company name in the title bar anymore either).

The only correlation between this and IE is HTML – that I know of. Some days I don’t have this problem (like this morning) while other days it’s consistently there. Any help in this matter would reduce the headache that I have experienced in this whole thing. I have “administrative” rights – but there are some limitations.

I have been told the next step is to “re-image” my machine which I won’t do. I have licenses for an RTOS on my machine that I can’t replace, and which I need to do my development for work. Without them, I might as well go home. Corporate IT is farmed out, and we have one local guy who can come in, but they won’t even give him access to networks and programs for him to do his job. I have also contacted one of our former network administrators (from our now disbanded internal IT department) and he doesn’t have any idea on this.

ANY help (short of reformatting or re-imaging) is appreciated. Since it comes and goes, it must have to do with a setting or a program (or process) that runs or doesn’t, that is interferring with my HTML stuff. It also may have something to do with a company policy setting (that’s the thought of our former IT guy). If I have to re-image, I am non-productive for at least a week to get all my development software back on (our corporate IT only handles Windows updates (we just got SP3 last week), IE, Office, and a couple other programs (Office Communicator, Live Meeting, etc). All the other programs I need for my job are not supported because they are not part of the business model (we are the only Product Development group in our sector in the US).

Attached is an informational email that I received (didn’t create it) that shows the same tendency.

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One thing you should try if you haven’t already is deleting Temporary Internet Files (IE cache).

I assume you use the native Outlook editor, and not MS Word as your editor for email? They do behave somewhat differently.

Also, I assume you compose in HTML and not Rich Text format.

Does the issue arise with the native Windows clipboard, or only using Clipmate?

If you right-click an image (e.g., dilbert.gif) and save it to your Pictures folder, then use Insert>Picture, does that work reliably? In other words, can we narrow down the issue to a problem with pasting?

For a problem image, if save to Drafts, close and re-open the message, does the image display? If you can’t see it in Sent Items, probably not, but just checking.

If you right-click a message with a problem image and choose View Source, and search for <img can you see anything unusual about the URL? Generally speaking, linked images will have a valid URL and embedded images will have a gibberish file name. Any pattern there? Also, has Outlook pasted anything suspicious in the vicinity, such as a <script or <object or <applet? Those should be blocked by Outlook security, so pasting them could cause a problem.

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Hello and thanks for answering.

I did flush my IE cache (just tried again) and it didn’t change anything.

I am using the internal Outlook editor – not MS Word as the editor.

Saving to draft and then re-opening does nothing – as long as the problem is active (see below for “it” – the problem – coming and going).

I have the same trouble – sometimes – with incoming HTML emails as well as (almost) every email that I send. Most of the emails with images embedded are HTML newletters which display with no problems. I have only gotten a couple in the past year (since last Nov) sent from someone internally, in which I had the same symptoms I experience when creating the email (by pasting the image).

I was able to embed an image into the email in HTML format from a graphics file by selecting “Insert” / “Picture” then choosing a graphic image. The image appears normally. That is one way that I can use as a work-around, but it is more time and space consuming that copy and paste. But maybe that will give someone an idea of why this is happening. Either that or the following source information.

I have tried changing my default email to rich text, and this resolves part of the problem (with outgoing emails) but it has other limitations.
Changing my email format to rich text still doesn’t allow me to read my incoming email when it does this. Other email I receive (in fact most of it) is in HTML format and I can usually see the images. Every once in awhile though, I receive an email that does the same thing. There is something subtle going on here.

I tried an experiment creating a clip (small section of screen) and pasted it into both a rich text email and an HTML email. Then I emailed them to myself (so I could view the message source – Outlook doesn’t let you look at the source before you send it).

For the rich text formatted email, the image source was shown as: (image successfully embedded)

For the HTML formatted email, the image source was shown as: (embedded image shows as red ‘x’ in box)

If I were to send you the two emails, you would be able to view the same image in both. It doesn’t appear to be a problem when the email is created, or how the image is embedded. It’s only on my machine that I have this issue. Other people who get the emails that I can’t see the image in, receive it and it looks fine on their machine.

I tried the same thing with Windows clipboard after shutting ClipMate down. The results were the same.

Once I had one in which I copied and pasted a set of Dilberts in and sent them to my coworkers. Everyone could see them. I then got an email from one guy – he had tried to forward my email to a summer intern. He saw one of the images with the top half of the image visible and the bottom not, and the remaining images all shown as the same red ‘x’ in a box. It was really strange – I saw it on his machine – the original one I sent, and this bizzare one after trying to forward it. He sent it to me, and it looked the same on my machine (wished I would have kept it).

This has baffled all our tech support people – especially after getting the WinXP SP3 installed lately which cured the problem temporarily. When it was working, I viewed stored emails in which the image was missing, and I could see them!! Now that the problem is back, those same emails show the same problem – again.

I suspect it is some kind of security or policy setting that I am overlooking. Actually I can see the group policies, and I can change them, but I don’t know what I am looking for.

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Since I generally avoid pasting directly into HTML and almost always insert from disk, I probably don’t have much additional guidance…

Do you use any “ad blockers” in IE? If so, try disabling those in case the selective image blocking is ad-related.

For the HTML formatted email, the image source was shown as: (embedded image shows as red ‘x’ in box)

A “cid” source indicates a hidden attached image. If you can install code into Outlook, check out [post=’626454′]post #626454[/post] for a macro and form that will show you all the attachments, including hidden image attachments, in an HTML message. If the attachment is there, but not displayed, that might tell us something — if we can identify a pattern, for example, with the file names or formats.

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Tried the embedded image VBA script/macro on an email that had a red ‘x’ image in it and it showed a Dialog box with this message: “No attachements or embedded images found. Could it be linked?” In the source code for this email is the line “IMG src=”cid:808401113@15092010-2EC9″>”.

I checked the pop-up blocker and it was set to exclude blocking from my company domain. I then clicked to disable the pop-up blocker completely. This didn’t improve things.

I went through other emails with Dilbert strips embedded – some I could see – others not. I then looked at the source. Those that I could see had as the source the http address to the Dilbert website (I copied them by right clicking from an email and then copying and pasting into a new HTML email). Those I couldn’t see had the “cid:” followed by the numbers like above.

I found a couple other emails that had the red ‘x’ in them; one also had a jpg attachment. I ran the macro on the email and it showed two image files: one with the name of the attachement which I could save using the macro. The other one was named “Outlook.jpg” but when I tried to save it to the same direction, I got the following error message (in attachment):

The macro then gave me an option to debug or to end – which ended the VBA macro. I did this several times with different messages and I finally got an Outlook crash and restart.

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I’m running out of ideas. I wonder whether there is a problem with your attachment security settings? Normally, attachment security applies to executable file extensions; it should not apply to image file extensions. There is a key in the registry which governs blocked attachments. If you search this board, you can find more information. Also, check out this tool: Slovak Technical Services – Attachment Options.

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I’m running out of ideas. I wonder whether there is a problem with your attachment security settings? Normally, attachment security applies to executable file extensions; it should not apply to image file extensions. There is a key in the registry which governs blocked attachments. If you search this board, you can find more information. Also, check out this tool: Slovak Technical Services – Attachment Options.

Thanks for all your help. I will give this a try and get back with the results. If this is the culprit, then it makes sense. I have suspected a security issue all along. It goes along with the stupidity and inconsistency of our corporate – outsourced (as in another state) IT services.

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Have you tried going to Tools/Options/Security tab, and clicking on Automatic Picture Download Settings? Deselect “Don’t download pictures or other content automatically in HTML e-mail” and press OK to exit.

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Have you tried going to Tools/Options/Security tab, and clicking on Automatic Picture Download Settings? Deselect “Don’t download pictures or other content automatically in HTML e-mail” and press OK to exit.

I deseleted the “Don’t download…” as you instructed – no change.

On another note, I created an HTML email, selected “Insert” then “Picture” from a jpg file I had on my hard drive. Then from a jpg file viewer (IrfanView), I copied the same picture above the first. The first showed up in the email and the second showed as the box with the red ‘x’ in it. I then looked at the source from the email and saw the following HTML code:

First picture – copied and pasted from IrfanView of the jpg picture file:

Second picture inserted from jpg file – it displays properly:

I can’t tell the difference, but one displays (2nd) and the other (1st) does not. Perhaps someone will see something that I don’t and this will be a clue to what’s happening.

Another odd thing: If I open the source it goes into my programmer’s editor – UltraEdit (which is excellent for html editing). It has the ability to show the contents of the source code in a browser (in this case IE7). When I display this email source, BOTH pictures show up as boxes with little red ‘x’s in them! It’s as though the underlying HTML display engine is a problem – perhaps for Outlook as well. But I think it odd that the one picture displays properly while the other does not in the same email – same picture – just different means to insert.

To reiterate, I can right click a Dilbert comic strip from an email that I receive (it displays), or from the Dilbert website, and paste it into a new email. Most of the time it displays properly, occassionally it does not. When it displays properly, it show the http address for the comic strip as the source, and when it doesn’t, it shows the “cid:” line as above. I thought I was onto something here until I saw this example where both picture sources show the “cid” and one displays and the other doesn’t (in Outlook) and neither does in IE7 (and IE6 which I was using until a month ago).

This has baffled our upper level IT tech support (new ticket – passed from 1st level to 2nd level – still waiting for response). I can’t find rhyme or reason for this behavior.

One other thing that just came to mind. If I go to the Dilbert.com site, I can see all the comic strips perfectly in both IE and FireFox (3.6). If I go to Comics.com, I get weird results. In FireFox, I see pictures for everything (ads, and header) except for the strips – I only see text there. If I open this site under IE, I see the same banners and ads, but where the strips are supposed to be, I see empty boxes with the same small squares with the red ‘x’s in them as I see in Outlook. This site issue is a result of a recent (month ago) update to our computers and don’t know if this means anything. I have attached the look of both browsers in files. So far this is the only site I have found with this issue. My Comics.com daily emails also look the same in Outlook.

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Regarding Firefox images, these may be helpful for troubleshooting:

General: Images or animations do not load – MozillaZine Knowledge Base

Third party images: Permissions.default.image – MozillaZine Knowledge Base (comics.com uses a content distribution network for the actual cartoons)

It is unlikely that issues in Firefox are related to issues in IE, unless there is a security suite/firewall issue or hosts file issue that affects all web requests.

Returning to the issue of pasted images in email messages, if unblocking images in IE doesn’t solve that, we will have to probe Outlook’s behavior a little more closely.

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Returning to the issue of pasted images in email messages, if unblocking images in IE doesn’t solve that, we will have to probe Outlook’s behavior a little more closely.

Eureka!!!
I showed this problem to a collegue and he did some internet searching and came up with a solution. The temporary internet folder pointed to in the registry for local settings and Internet Explorer (regedit) must be shared with Windows in general, but specifically Outlook. The folder (which is hidden and has system attributes) had a sub-folder (also not viewable). I had to use a cmd window and DOS commands to view directories with hidden and system attributes. Once I could see it, I used the cd function to go into the folders and then “del *.jpg”, “del *.pdf”, etc. to clean out some files, although not all files would delete.

Once I deleted some files from this folder, the problem went away and I can paste with no issue and can view emails not previously showing images. I think the key was the cid: which must point to that folder. I then set about a means to clean out the folder completely.

I had previously flushed the cache through IE, and this didn’t resolve the problem. I was able to view and delete all temp files by using a demo version of XYplorer which displayed (from defaults) all the folders and contents. It then allowed me to select and delete all files – even with read-only attributes. I’m looking over all the features of this file manager and may register it. XYplorer

Anyway, the problem was solved in a couple hours once my co-worker looked into it. I really intrigued him by showing him the email with the image pasted in, how it looked on my machine, and then sending the email to him and he could see it. Then he became like a bull dog until he found a solution. I just wanted to share the results here in case anyone else runs into this quirk.

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Although this Lounge post http://bro.ws/718533L is for Outlook 2002, it always worked for me when I was using Outlook 2003. See post #6 for step-by-step instructions.

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