All of a sudden I have lost my load images in apple mail,all I get is a blue box with a ? in it....any suggestions

What happens if you control-click on the box?

has mail's network access been restricted? (firewall)

Nothing : However when I first bring up the mail there is a quick flash of whats inside the msg. then it goes to the blue box

sorry I don't know how to check for that

Does the problem persist after a reboot?

Yes , and after using onyx and disc utility

Do you maybe have Little Snitch installed and configured to deny certain, or all, access?

Afraid not, but thanks for trying

If you go to Mail -> Preferences -> Viewing, is the Display remote images in HTML messages checkbox checked?

This thread caught my attention as I too have the same problem as Jay-Bird.

It seems this condition is fairly recent,e.g., began sometime in the last 30 days, but I'm really not sure.

I do know that Rebuilding the mailbox brought no joy to my machine.

FWIW, I verified that my HTML box is enabled. I then toggled the setting. Again, no joy.

Yes it is

Mine also startd a little while ago. Called apple support, but no help

I poked around the Apple Discussion boards and saw that others are likewise having the same problem, though a solution remains elusive.

As AOL is my ISP, I logged-in directly to my AOL account and then attempted to see the same email experienced the same issue. It does, in part...

What I get is an alert: This email contains an embedded image. Do you know the sender, want to open it? Well, something like that.

When I gave permission to open the email & the embedded image, it opened as designed.

So it may be that when AOL "sends" the email to Mail, the filter automatically kicks in, but without a way of granting permission to view the image.

I hunted about AOL's preferences, but I could find no setting to alter the situation.

Confusion reigns-

Posts discussing a problem with .pdf attachments in email have been detached from this thread and are now located in
Problem with .pdf attachments in email.

Problem solved (on my machine).

What I did:
1. Open Mail>Preferences/Viewing
2. Deselect “Display remote images in HTML messages”
3. Quit Mail and then reopen Mail
4. Go back to Mail Preferences/Viewing and reselect “Display remote images in HTML messages”
5. Quit Mail

After that, when I open Mail all is as it should be.

I guess it was just a matter of clearing a corrupt preference.

At any rate, I hope the above will help others.

Thanks for sharing the solution, Harv.

The symptom certainly smacked of a possible faulty .plist, but I've become reluctant to recommend moving or deleting com.apple.mail.plist due to the potential confusion engendered when Mail is subsequently relaunched ("Would you like to see what's new in Mail?").

If the move or deletion cures the problem, there can be a fair amount of configuring to be done to get things back to how they were, and even if the problem isn't solved and the old .plist is moved back to overwrite the newly created one, it can still take a bit of tinkering to get things right. (For instance, I always wind up with the "Apple Hot News" feed under the RSS category, even though I don't use Mail as a feed reader and always eliminate the category, once I figure out how to do so.)

It didn't work for me. Maybee I have to move to snow leopard. though I prefer to stay with leopard, but tks anyway

try creating a new user on your machine and setup mail and see if it works. that's one of the troubleshooting 101's - rule out the user account.

Next step is stage 2, rule out the computer. (set up a test account on another mac running the same version of os and test mail)

I have tried all. Are there any tutorials on moving or deleting the plist?. Not too computer savy...... tks

I have tried all.

so you're saying you tried setting up the account on another computer and you still have the problem, and are looking for a plist to fix?

that's NOT going to work.

Sorry virtual I didn't try that ...only have one computer,do not know anybody with a mac....After talking to apple support for about 3hrs (in Iowa) nothing helped so I purchased snow leopard and I am awaiting its arrival........Thanks again for all your help.....

heh, you sure you didn't talk to me?

talked to roy and then michael...michael gave me his phone number for help installing snow leopard...if thats you Great

not me but same area