Email to DropBox Apple Mail Support

[chccmessage]

I'm having a problem with a friend sending email attachments to DropBox when they use Apple Mail. The email attachments do not show up in my Email Attachments folder on my Windows DropBox app folder. Is there a workaround for this?

[chccmessage]

I have several friends that send me files as email attachments using Gmail. Many of the files show up in the Windows Desktop App folder, but occasionally some files do not show up. No bounce-back message is sent to the sender, so he or she has no indication that the attachment was not sent. I have to contact the sender to confirm that I have the files they intended to send. What is causing this and are others having this problem? Is the DropBox email server overloaded sometimes during the day? Is there a workaround to ensure the email attachments sent to me are in fact sent?

[Jay]

Hi @chccmessage, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

When you're using the email to Dropbox feature, the email attachments have to be literally attachments.

If the 'attachments' are embedded into the main body of the email, then it isn't detected as an attachment. For images, Apple Mail generally pastes it in the body of the email. You'd need to find a setting in the app to prevent this from occurring. 

Keep me updated with any progress!

[bpy]

Hi, 

I have the same issue. Unfortunately, on the link that you refer en Apple, there is no solution. We tried several different configurations. 

Did anyone find a working solution? I am running MacOS Monterey with Mail v16.0

Regards, 

Benoit

[Nancy]

Hey @bpy, sorry to hear you’re having the same issue.

Did you start experiencing this behavior right after setting up the feature or was it working properly for some time?

Can you let me know what steps you’ve tried so far, so that we can investigate further?

[chccmessage]

We’ve tried everything to get sending an image using Apple mail to dropbox, and nothing works. We have users sending JPEG images using Gmail and have no problems with those images showing up in our dropbox email folder. I really can’t force the users to switch away from Apple mail.

[Jay]

Hi @chccmessage, as you are using MacMail, you may experience some issues with the attachments not uploading. The issue with MacMail application, as many others express in the Apple forums, is that adding images to an email will actually embedded the image instead of attaching. So even if you see the paper clip icon to show there is an attachment, Apple's technology will show the images direct as inline files.

In order for this feature to work, you would need to use another mail service or add the image to a .pdf file to attach. PDF files in MacMail are set as an actual attachment and will be uploaded as expected.

[bpy]

Thanks for your answer.

Indeed, the way Apple Mail sends the attachment is always “in body” as Mime object.

That could be cool that Dropbox implement that support.

I finally ended up creating an AppleScript that saves the attachment directly on the Email Attachment folder, synced on the same machine. That does the job.

Happy to share if requested.