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How to attach iPhoto images to Gmail & Yahoo Mail – Video Tip

Currently, iPhoto only lets you send photos via email from within iPhoto if you use the Apple Mail program. For web based email users like Gmail, HotMail or Yahoo email, follow the easy steps in this tip.

  1. Start a new email as normal in your Gmail, HotMail, Yahoo mail, etc.
  2. Complete the address, subject, and body of the message as normal as well.
  3. Look for and click the Attach Files option
  4. The Select Files screen will appear
  5. In the lower left hand corner of this screen, click Photos
  6. Now at the top of the screen, you will see iPhoto where you can click your Events or Photos folder
  7. Now all your photos appear at the bottom of the screen where you can select the ones you want to send. (Hold down the Command key as you click to select more than one photo)
  8. When finished selecting your photos, click the Select button
  9. Once they upload to the email, click Send on your email.

All these steps are illustrated and narrated for you in the following video:

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42 thoughts on “How to attach iPhoto images to Gmail & Yahoo Mail – Video Tip”

  1. I viewed your instructions in how to attach iphoto pics to an email account such as yahoo. It was very helpful. I am very familiar with holding down the command button to select several files of choice, but I found that this did not work for me as it does in your video. I can’t imagine what I am doing wrong. Can you? -Dean

        1. when I select the photos in Iphoto the command (apple) key is not performing it’s normal function of letting me choose more than one photo to upload. Therefore, I am only able to upload one photo at a time!

          1. Hmmm…not sure what to tell you. Are you using latest version of iPhoto? I will try and look at my Mac and see if I can duplicate the issue or find an answer.

      1. Hi, your suggestions worked until Yahoo’s last upgrade a couple of months ago. Now, I not only cannot attach more than one photo at a time from IPhoto, but it takes forever to attach the photos.

    1. Yeah! After trying several suggestions I found in other locations on the web, this one finally worked. Thank you.

    2. what a dork i am. i have been saving my photos to desktop for years since i have web mail. didn’t know i could do it from iphoto. still having issues with video, tho. hard to email from iphoto and have the person on the other end be able to open it.

    3. thanks so much. my dad has been looking for a solution for this for ages and after turning the air very blue your page has provided the solution. Simple and easy! Brilliant!

    4. Barbara Van Grootheest

      Step 5 says to click Photos from the Select Files screen. My screen doesn’t offer Photos, it offers Pictures. There are old pictures of mine there, however, I want to get to my Events in iPhoto. Any ideas why Photos doesn’t come up on my Select Files screen?

      1. Barbara, that was my struggle as well, but then I realized I can scroll down that list on the left of the screen. Photos is down below out of sight, which makes the whole thing much more complicated than it ought to be. Once you select Photos, you will be able to continue as in the video. Now what I want to know is, how do you preview pictures before you attach them? The thumbnails are so tiny that it’s impossible to really see which picture you’re choosing.

    5. i did this before finding this particular site and yahoo just keeps saying, ‘attaching files.’ it did the same thing when i tried upload pages but then i figured out how to do that.

      i’m not sure what the trick is here. as i type, it still says attaching files….

    6. I too do not have a photos option on my MacBook Pro running 10.6 and iPhoto ’09 with Gmail attaching. I see the iPhoto library after clicking pictures, but can not get sub folder or individual pictures. Any suggestions please?

      I would love to know how to do this as I refuse to be forced to adding Mail just for sending photos.

    7. Is this app automatically resizing the pic before attaching.

      Jack hurt in mid 0f night fall May 29 broken arm and hip went down 7 steps by missing turn on the hall.

      Now at rehab St Mary’s still has computer here.

      1. This is pretty old news ab out jack’s fall maybe it would be nice to have it removed.
        In the new g-mail I went to settings labs and enabled inset photo in email then cliched xave at the bottom of the labs and I now see the icon on the compose sheet to allow for inserting a photo but I do not see how to choose the size small medium or large. I admit I could have re sized in elements but thought this was possible to re-size here at the icon next to the smiley face
        Bev

    8. the process breaks down for me when it says to hold down the command button to send multiple pictures. it doesnt work. i can however go to another file and attach another picture…but still only one picture at a time.

        1. yes, except when i hit ‘attach files’, there is no ‘select files ‘ option. instead, there are 5 individual files to be checked and it says ‘click browse to select file’. but there is no ‘browse’ on the screen. there is no ‘photos’ in the bottom left hand corner. if i click on ‘select file#1, iphoto appears,and i can click 1 and click choose. then i have to go through the whole process again after clicking on file #2. the command key has no effect.

          1. If you use iPhoto to manage your photos and are using a version of Mac OS 10.4 or newer, this should work. I reviewed the video and can’t figure out where you are stuck. Sorry.

    9. When I send photos directly from iPhoto to my windows PC friend he can’t see the photos. He says they are embedded and they are HTML.
      How do we fix this problem so he can see the photos?
      Thx

      1. Hmm…if you are following the above directions, I’m not sure what to tell you. I would almost have to see it in order to figure it out sorry.

    10. Looked for this amazingly simple solution in so many places. Could not find it.

      Thank YOU soooooo much for this. You rock! Everything worked fine for me.

    11. Here’s how you can do it seamlessly!

      Go to the mac mail program. Add your gmail account. Then when you select send from within iphoto it will allow you to resize on the fly and choose which email you want to use (me.com or gmail.com).

      Now if you want to use yahoo, it’s a bit tricky but it works! It first complains of wanting to use some plus service for $20/year by yahoo. This is only if you want to read emails and use the mac mail program to actually read your email. But we don’t! we just want to send our photos. So just keep clicking through. Then finally you need to do 2 things:

      1) change the Outgoing Mail server (SMTP) to: pop.mail.yahoo.com

      2) check the ‘use only this server

      ANd now it will work!!!!

    12. Hi, I’d like to know where are stored the emails with photos attached sent through iPhoto. I simply can’t find them anywhere!!!

    13. I recently saw that now, if you compose your email, you can click on the iPhoto icon on the top right of the email window to choose from the IPhoto Library the pictures you want, but staying on the Mail application. Like that you can keep track of the sent mail.

    14. Pingback: Internet Email Accounts and iPhoto

    15. I was able to follow all of the steps up until “attach files.” When I tried to click this button in Yahoo mail, nothing happens? Any ideas? Thanks!

    16. When I do what it says in the video, my pictures go into the body of my email. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

    17. I can do ALL of the attaching and emailing from iPhoto but my poor friends with PCs cannot see them on their computers, only their smart phones. Is there any way to help these poor souls short of getting them to switch to Mac?

    18. Thank you so much – I have been trying to figure this out for ages and read so many web pages telling me to either do it from iPhoto or that it can’t be done. I had clicked on Pictures higher up, to no avail, but never saw the Media – Photos part on the lower left – THANK YOU – this makes me so happy. No more copying pictures to the desktop then trashing them after (and being frustrated that with my expensive Mac I have to do this) – makes my life so much easier.

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