When forwarding emails, pictures are stripped from text & put in slide show destroying original

Hey, Tom, welcome back.  And thanks for the really well-organized error reporting.  Yours is the first example I have come across of "the problem" among MS mail clients.  I have a group of friends whom I correspond with daily, and this picture-dropping thing ALWAYS happens after I receive WLM-embedded pictures from a friend running Thunderbird under Linux, but NEVER when they are back-and-forth between me (WLM) and others, all using MS Outlook.

When my pictures come back from the friend with Thunderbird, they are still embedded.  But when then I reply or forward, they are stripped by WLM and remain so for everyone in the group.  If the Thunderbird guy drops out of the group, and all messages are between me (WLM) and the other guys (Outlook), everything is fine over many generations (forwardings) of the messages.

I have reduced the subject mails to .txt files and looked at them with Notepad.  There are big differences in the formatting of the mail, depending on whom it is coming from, but I have no idea what I'm really seeing and can't properly interpret it.  I and others have forwarded these files to the WLM crew, but obviously they can't find what's causing this either.  Really, though, would it be so hard simply to compare the mechanics of WLM 2011 with the earlier version, WLM 2009, which did NOT have this problem?

My Linux friend, who has no love for anything Microsoft, says that whoever wrote the code for the HTML rendering in WLM 2011 just got it wrong.  Beyond me.

Hello there SOCSeven,

I hope you don’t mind if I jump into the fray again, but I think I may have something to offer.

1. My son received an email from a friend, a cute “Another Blond Joke” with 6 pictures (gifs) imbedded into the body of the email. All is good.
2. My son (XP OE) then forwarded this to my wife. It came in as sent. All is still good.
3. My wife (XP OE) then forwarded this to me. It came in as sent. All is good once again.
4. To do a test, I (Win7 WLM) went to forward it to myself and my other email client. I got the dreaded “One or more of the pictures in this message could not be found. …”. I sent it anyway!
5. I then opened the email in my other email client (Win7 MS Outlook). The text was there and there were 6 “Boxes” where the pictures (gifs) had been. These were now stripped out of the body of the email and shown as attachments at the top of the email. Altering the forwarded email in this way pretty much ruined it. What a disappointment!
6. Now, just for the heck of it, for another test, I (Win7 WLM) again forwarded the email, intact as I had received it, to myself. Once more I got the dreaded “One or more of the pictures in this message could not be found. …”. I sent it anyway!
7. This time I opened it from where I had sent it (Win7 WLM). Would you believe it, now the text was there and there were 6 “Boxes” where the pictures (gifs) had been. These were now stripped out of the body of the email and shown as thumbnails at the top of the email. Again, altering the forwarded email in this way pretty much ruined it. Another disappointment!

It is so obvious that WLM is seriously flawed, and has been so for a ridiculously long period of time.

Now, before some moderator again asks the standard questions, to which I am not going to reply, I have a suggestion. Ample submissions have been made concerning this issue. Get yourselves computers using the various operating systems and email clients as have been reported to you. Create your own examples; I am sure you can find the expertise and knowledgeable personnel to do this. All it will take is a willingness and commitment on your part. And please, please, please, find a way to keep your WLM users informed and let them know what to expect. “Keep checking back to this thread” is not good enough.

Tom (aka Reallyoldguy)

To add insult to injury, WLM just updated and now I have NO Email addresses! Unaceptable is an understatement! Bart Simpson could do better! Microsofts Creditability just went further south and their "so called" technitions are seriously over paid! Thank GOD for RESTORE!

It's now april of 2012 when are they goint to fix this defect with WLM? I have WLM because they reduce all the pictures thumbnails and require you click on them to view them. I find this totally unaceptable and will not update until they fix this. I made the mistake of upgrading once, and it was a nightmare uninstalling it and going back to windows mail. This really sucks having to wait so long for microsoft to fix this..... I gues I'll have to start looking at other email / newgroup programs, cause it seems like microsoft doesn't give a ****.... they just take your money

John Palmer

Thank you.  It is nice to know that I am not the only they DO NOT pay attention to.  Though you did not solve my problem, I am glad to hear that others are in the same boat, so to speak.  Misery loves company.