Knowledgebase

Enable missing images to display in various email clients

Images in an email sometimes don't display for a variety of reasons. If your contacts are telling you that they're receiving your email but content isn't displaying properly, a good place to start is to have them check the settings in their email client to make sure that their images are enabled to display:

• Apple Mail
• iPhone/iPod/iPad
• Outlook (formerly Hotmail)/Windows Live
• Outlook 2003
• Outlook 2007
• Outlook 2010
• Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013 - Secure Images
• Outlook 2016
• Outlook Express 6
• Thunderbird

If the settings in the email client are correct and your contact still can't view images:

• If you're using image URLs that are hosted outside of your email client, make sure the images are hosted on a public web server. If your images are stored on your personal computer, it won't display in an email.
• Sometimes the image is just too large or in a format that the email client doesn't support; the most common formats are JPG, PNG and GIF.

Apple Mail

Display images automatically within your inbox:

1. Click Mail > Preferences. 
2. Click the Viewing button.
3. Make sure a check mark is next to "Load remote content in messages."
4. Close the window.

For additional assistance with images in Apple Mail, please see Apple Support.

Entourage

Display images for individual emails:

1. Open the email.
2. Click Download images at the top of the email.

Display images from contacts that are in your address book:

1. Click Entourage.
2. Click Preferences.
3. Click Security.
4. Click Automatically download.

Entourage was replaced with Outlook. For additional assistance with Entourage, please see Microsoft Support.

iPhone/iPod/iPad

If the mail application fails to download an email properly, try backing out to the Inbox and reopening the message.

View the content of a large email:

The mail application places a limit on the amount of content it will download. Large messages sometimes won't automatically download the whole content of the email.

1. Scroll to the bottom of the message.
2. Click the Download Full Message button.

Display images for individual emails:

1. Click the My Settings icon.
2. Under Settings on the left, select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. On the right-hand side, under Mail, find the Load Remote Images option.
4. Slide the bar to ON.

For additional assistance with iOS devices, please see Apple Support.

Outlook (formerly Hotmail / Windows Live)

Display images for individual emails:

1. Open the email.
2. Click Show content at the top of the email.
3. Click "Show blocked content."

Disable image blocking for all messages:

1. Click Settings.
2. Click "View all Outlook settings."
3. Click Mail > Layout.
4. Under the Sender image section, select "Show sender images."

For additional assistance with images in Outlook, please see Microsoft Support.

Outlook 2003

Display images for individual emails:

1. Open the email.
2. Right-click on one of the missing images.
3. Select Download Pictures.

Disable image blocking:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. Click Security.
3. Under Download Pictures, click Change Automatic Download Settings.
4. Uncheck "Don't download pictures or other content automatically in HTML email."

For additional assistance with images in Outlook, please see Microsoft Support.

Outlook 2007

Display images for individual emails:

1. Click Tools.
2. Select Trust Center.
3. Select Automatic Download.
4. Uncheck the "Don't download pictures automatically in HTML e-mail messages or RSS items" checkbox.
5. Click OK.

Add a contact to your safe sender list:

Another way to ensure that images download is to ensure that the sender is on your safe sender list.

1. Click on Tools > Options.
2. On the Preferences tab, click on the Junk E-mail button.
3. Click on the tab for Safe Senders.
4. Click Add to add the email to the list.
5. Click OK to exit this window.
6. Click OK to close out of the Options menu.

For additional assistance with images in Outlook, please see Microsoft Support.

Outlook 2010

Display images for all emails:

1. Click the File > Options.
2. Click Trust Center.
3. Click the  Trust Center Settings button.
4. Uncheck the box next to the "Don't download pictures automatically in HTML e-mail messages or RSS items" option.

For additional assistance with images in Outlook 2010, please see Microsoft Support.

Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013 - Secure Images

Internet Explorer has a security setting that, when enabled, prevents Outlook from displaying images with a secure URL. (Image URLs starting with "http" will display, but not URLs that start with "https.")

Change the setting in Internet Explorer:

If Outlook 2007, 2010, or 2013 displays some - but not all - images, you may need to change the setting in your Internet Explorer web browser or desktop software.

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Go to Tools > Internet Options.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. Scroll down to the Security settings list, then uncheck the "Do not save encrypted pages to disk" option.
5. Click OK.

Before the changes take effect, it may sometimes be necessary to clear the cache in Internet Explorer and close Outlook (File > Exit to close fully). After relaunching Outlook, send yourself another email with an image that did not display previously.

For additional assistance with images in Outlook, please see Microsoft Support.
 

Outlook 2016

Unblock picture downloads for all messages:

1. Click File.
2. Click Options.
3. Click Trust Center.
4. Under Microsoft Outlook Trust Center, click Trust Center Settings.
5. Uncheck the Don't download pictures automatically in HTML e-mail messages or RSS items check box.

If this doesn't resolve your issue, check if you have text-only emails enabled.

Disable text-only emails:

1. Click File.
2. Click Options.
3. Click Trust Center Settings.
4. Click E-mail Security.
5. Under Read as Plain Text, make sure that the Read all standard mail in plain text is unchecked. 

Outlook Express 6

Unblock images:

1. Open Outlook Express 6.
2. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Security tab.
3. Uncheck the box next to "Block images and other external content in the HTML email."
4. Click on Apply then click OK.

Unblock images while using Internet Explorer:

1. Go to Tools > Internet Options and click the Advanced tab.
2. Scroll down to the "Multimedia" section place a check in the box for "Show Pictures."

For additional assistance with images in Outlook Express, please see Microsoft Support.

Thunderbird

By default, Thunderbird blocks remote images in email messages to help protect your privacy. When you receive a message with remote images, Thunderbird will display an alert stating that remote images have been blocked.

View remote images:

1. Click the Show Images or Load Images button that appears to the right of the alert message.

Allow images from all senders:

1. Click Tools.
2. Click Options.
3. Click Privacy.
4. Click General and make the desired changes.

Enable display of remote images in Thunderbird 2.0:

Global image settings aren't available in Thunderbird 2.0, and all remote images are blocked by default.

1. Open the email.
2. Click "Click here to always load remote images from ..." at the top of the email.

For additional assistance with images in Thunderbird, please see Mozilla Thunderbird Support.