Alert: 'Inline Attachment' error in Yahoo Mail Classic
UPDATED 8/11
In Yahoo Mail Classic, some retail emails have been appearing with an “-----Inline Attachment Follows-----” message preceding the copy of the email. The error doesn’t appear to affect the rest of the message, but it does take up valuable real estate at the top of the email, in addition to making a bad brand impression. Here’s what the error looks like in an FTD email from yesterday:
The error first appeared on July 31 and since that time has thus far affected every email from Coldwater Creek, FTD, KB Toys and MLB—which is only about 4% of the retailers that I track. So the problem doesn’t appear to be terribly widespread. So far, the issue appears to be limited to Yahoo Mail Classic. Emails that were affected in Yahoo Mail Classic rendered fine in the new Yahoo Mail and in Gmail.
For a full explanation of the cause of this issue, see the comment below from Aaron Smith of Smith-Harmon.
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In Yahoo Mail Classic, some retail emails have been appearing with an “-----Inline Attachment Follows-----” message preceding the copy of the email. The error doesn’t appear to affect the rest of the message, but it does take up valuable real estate at the top of the email, in addition to making a bad brand impression. Here’s what the error looks like in an FTD email from yesterday:
The error first appeared on July 31 and since that time has thus far affected every email from Coldwater Creek, FTD, KB Toys and MLB—which is only about 4% of the retailers that I track. So the problem doesn’t appear to be terribly widespread. So far, the issue appears to be limited to Yahoo Mail Classic. Emails that were affected in Yahoo Mail Classic rendered fine in the new Yahoo Mail and in Gmail.
For a full explanation of the cause of this issue, see the comment below from Aaron Smith of Smith-Harmon.
_____________________
SEARCH... By Post Category / By Selling Season / By Retailer / By Topic / Monthly Archive
Labels: Alerts, Coding Issues, Coldwater Creek, FTD, KB Toys, MLB
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posted at 11:34 AM by Chad White
I love Smith-Harmon's enthusiasm. It's so great to have a connection with people who really "get" and get excited by email marketing. (Truly, there are not that many of us out there!) I count myself very lucky to have found such accomplished enthusiasts to collaborate with on the REI program. They are helping to bring amazing opportunities to fruition with panache.
4 Comments:
I had a hunch it was related to MIME header settings and confirmed it by tweaking the MIME settings of an HTML email in order to reproduce the problem. Turns out this is occurring on Yahoo Classic when you include the optional MIME header setting "Content-Disposition: inline" when packaging a multi-part MIME message.
The "content-disposition" parameter is an optional setting used in MIME messages to specify how the message should render. If the parameter is not specified, the default value is "inline", which notifies the email reader that the contents of the message should be displayed within the email window. The alternative value, “attachment”, makes the message show up as an attached file.
It appears that most retailers you’re tracking aren’t including a value for “content-disposition” in the MIME header, so they are showing up just fine (as they should be, since “inline” is the default behavior). For the few mailers that are playing extra safe and specifically including “Content-Disposition: inline” in the MIME header, Yahoo Classic is punishing them for their efforts by displaying that rather vague and cryptic message at the top of the email.
My guess is that most of the retailers you’re seeing this behavior with are all using the same email service provider, which is including a “content-disposition” parameter in their MIME header. I couldn’t say if Yahoo Mail Classic started doing this recently, or if it was something that was added recently by the ESP. I do know the simple solution is to remove “Content-Disposition: inline” from the MIME header code, but most mailers don’t have access to their ESP’s source code where the MIME message is packaged, so that may be easier said than done. And as far as getting Yahoo to update source code on a platform scheduled for retirement, you would have had better luck getting tickets to the opening ceremony for the Olympics!
Thanks, Aaron, for unravelling the mystery behind this.
wow - Aaron your'e a friggin genius man :) I stumbled across this thread looking for an answer to why the ominous phrase "Inline Attachment Follows" is appearing everytime someone with a Gmail address sends me an email to my Yahoo Classic Mail account. The bumbling idiots at Yahoo claim it's a problem on Gmail's end - yeah right! I literally feel sorry for this company, I'm surprised they're not out of business they're so stupid.
We've just had a support request at FastMail.FM about this very issue. We set Content-Disposition: headers because, well, it's the polite thing to do if your destination isn't being buggy today.
Given that it's a recent complaint, I have a hunch it's a recently introduced Yahoo bug.
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