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Problem with .pdf attachments in email
#7537 01/14/10 05:23 PM
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Edit by moderator: this post and its replies have been detached from mail images so readers can focus on troubleshooting this specific problem with .pdf attachments.

I don't know if this is the same thing, but what happened to me during the week was:

I have been sending some invoices as PDF attachments by email for years. Since Mail inserts attachments rather than er, attaching them, I can see my PDF right there in the body of the email, pretty much full size, before clicking Send. No one ever had a problem with this.

This week, same technique, same systems, my attached PDF displayed as a teenytiny postage stamp. No I didn't compress it first. I tried two different PDF-makers with same result. Eventually I converted the invoice to a JPG ( ! ) just to get it away by email.

I don't like weird things like this. Things should WORK or NOT WORK, not HALF WORK, Dammit!


Last edited by dianne; 01/15/10 01:21 AM. Reason: detached post and replies and created a new thread and subject.
Re: Problem with .pdf attachments in email
Bensheim #7538 01/14/10 05:43 PM
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Originally Posted By: Bensheim
I don't know if this is the same thing, but what happened to me during the week was:

I have been sending some invoices as PDF attachments by email for years. Since Mail inserts attachments rather than er, attaching them, I can see my PDF right there in the body of the email, pretty much full size, before clicking Send. No one ever had a problem with this.

This week, same technique, same systems, my attached PDF displayed as a teenytiny postage stamp. No I didn't compress it first. I tried two different PDF-makers with same result. Eventually I converted the invoice to a JPG ( ! ) just to get it away by email.

I don't like weird things like this. Things should WORK or NOT WORK, not HALF WORK, Dammit!

I'm not certain why your display format changed, but if you control-click on the icon (you're seeing your PDF's icon, rather than its image) and select the option to "View in Place" you'll see what you've always seen.

(I just sent myself an e-mail with the PDF "Viewed in Place," and it got to me with the PDF in icon form. [Do you know how your PDFs have reached your customers in the past?] Edit: Don't forget that a PDF is a file until it's opened as an image. )

Last edited by artie505; 01/14/10 05:49 PM.

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Problem with .pdf attachments in email
artie505 #7539 01/14/10 06:14 PM
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Artie, Hi

I just tried that. Fired up Mail, attached a pdf hanging around on the desktop.

It displayed as a teenytiny image of the invoice. i.e., I could see that it was that invoice from a supplier, with colour and layout etc.

Control clicked on it, chose "View as Icon". Then it changed before my eyes, into the PDF icon which is on the desktop.

View in Place is greyed out.

Weird. Computers are WEIRD. Everything works fine, for years, then ??? no explanation, no help from the help files, they just change their minds about hitherto perfectly OK functionality and they're getting more and more like human beings! Was it something I said? Did I offend it in some way?

There's a whole new industry waiting to be born out there: Psychoanalysing The Computer.

Re: Problem with .pdf attachments in email
Bensheim #7552 01/15/10 02:58 AM
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> It displayed as a teenytiny image of the invoice. i.e., I could see that it was that invoice from a supplier, with colour and layout etc.

[....]

View in Place is greyed out.


So you're seeing thumbnails of your PDFs; I assumed you were seeing their icons. (Have you e-mailed one to yourself to see what comes out of the other end of the pipe?)

Hmmm... I hear a bell ringing somewhere back in time, but damned if can get from the ding to the data.

("View in Place" is obviously grayed out because you already are viewing it, albeit in thumbnail form, in place.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Problem with .pdf attachments in email
Bensheim #7555 01/15/10 06:03 AM
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One potential gotcha: How many pages are the PDF files? Mail will never display a multi-page PDF in place.


Photo gallery, all about me, and more: www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
Re: Problem with .pdf attachments in email
tacit #7560 01/15/10 10:44 AM
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Originally Posted By: tacit
One potential gotcha: How many pages are the PDF files? Mail will never display a multi-page PDF in place.

But it will display an icon in that case, not a thumbnail of just one page, correct?


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Problem with .pdf attachments in email
tacit #7563 01/15/10 12:48 PM
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Quote:
Mail will never display a multi-page PDF in place.

That doesn't seem to be the case for me in OS X 10.5 (Mail.app 3.6).

The interface seems buggy, but I found, when creating a new message, that if I right-clicked on the .pdf icon and chose View in Place, I saw the whole document, inline, as a continuous series of pages which could be viewed in their entirety by scrolling with my scroll wheel with the cursor placed within the pdf content. Only the first page was initially displayed, and the message window's scrollbar itself merely shifted the position of that page within the message window, so it was only by accident that I discovered how to scroll the document itself.

When I right-clicked on the .pdf icon in the received test message and chose View in Place, the document appeared as a long continuous black rectangle. Right-clicking on that brought up a lengthy list of parameters including Automatically Resize and Actual Size (both of which, inexplicably, were checked); Single Page was also checked. Checking Single Page Continuous instead had the side effect of deselecting Actual Size. Then I reselected Actual Size, Automatically Resize was deselected as expected, and the entire document was displayed in the message window. This time, however, it was the entire message window which scrolled, in the normal fashion.

The View in Place behavior in the Sent message window was identical to that of the received message as described above, and the buggy behavior appears to be 100% reproducible...with that particular .pdf (owner's manual for the Hitachi C7YA Dust Collection Circular Saw—turns out it's a rather large file, so I pretty much used up the time I currently have available for experimentation; confirmation via other files will have to wait).



dkmarsh—member, FineTunedMac Co-op Board of Directors
Re: Problem with .pdf attachments in email
dkmarsh #7570 01/15/10 05:07 PM
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Quote:
..with that particular .pdf (owner's manual for the Hitachi C7YA Dust Collection Circular Saw—turns out it's a rather large file, ......


I love that note. It made me smile, thank you!

The multi-page pdf I tried was The Treaty of Rome.

WRT the person who asked (sorry, I can't see the thread now I'm in reply-mode) they are one A4 page pdfs.

Also, further experiments: the thumbnail which is inserted into the Mail window when I attach? Clicking on thumbnail makes it zoom up to actual size, which is what I had been used to seeing hitherto, so that looks like another case solved.

Warming to my theme: computers are inherently crazy. They think they're all neat and logical but they are not. They just plain DO weird things. The more complicated the developers make them, the weirder they get. Why else would so many trouble-shooting forums exist? wink

Re: Problem with .pdf attachments in email
Bensheim #7576 01/15/10 08:11 PM
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Originally Posted By: Bensheim
... computers are inherently crazy. They think they're all neat and logical but they are not. They just plain DO weird things..
One advice:
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that!

Re: Problem with .pdf attachments in email
_Mike_ #7577 01/15/10 08:36 PM
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Originally Posted By: _Mike_
Originally Posted By: Bensheim
... computers are inherently crazy. They think they're all neat and logical but they are not. They just plain DO weird things..
One advice:
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that!


I know that, Mike. Before my old G4 OS9 finally got taken out of production, I learned the hard way not to talk about it being retired within its hearing. "They can hear you" is a thread I started somewhere, (maybe here) on this very subject.

What happened when I spoke out loud about retiring it? It started to play up. I upset its feelings. (Old G4) "So, you're going to pull my plug eh? I'll show you how much you still need me......."

This is all true. Call me crazy? Sure, I'm a human being, not a computer after all. wink


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