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Usually, Gmail offers a link to download all attachments. However, someone sent me a HTML e-mail where the attachments are images inside the e-mail. They are technically attachments, but there is no link to download all attachments as an archive. Right now I am right-clicking on each image and clicking "save", but that's not a very convenient solution.

Is there a way to download all of them as an archive?

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4
  • Not for me. The situation is quite rare and I haven't put more time into it.
    – gerrit
    Dec 20, 2013 at 9:04
  • any final solution with source code ? mime messages ?
    – PreguntonCojoneroCabrón
    Mar 31, 2018 at 9:55
  • @PreguntonCojoneroCabrón I have not.
    – gerrit
    Apr 4, 2018 at 10:22
  • On the Android Gmail app, you can longpress an embedded image, then "View image", then "Save all" from the top right menu on the image preview screen, and it downloads all embedded images So, if none of the web options below are practical but you have an Android phone to hand, you could do that then copy the files from the phone.
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Oct 14, 2020 at 23:24

14 Answers 14

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13

My work-around to downloading all pictures of a embedded email in Gmail is to:

  1. open email with embedded images, make sure all images shown

  2. In your internet browser goto File menu and then use the "Save Page As" option. (I use Firefox, but should work for other internet browsers.)

  3. set a destination for your page and save

  4. all files, including pictures for that page should be saved to the destination folder

  5. extract pictures

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6

I've found no solution yet, but I found it's faster using drag & drop to download the images.

If the images would have been added as attachments, the option to download them all at once would appear.

More info here: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com.es/2013/03/attach-images-in-new-gmail-compose.html

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  • This method does not save the low resolution version of the image. To get the full resolution version you still have to click on the Download button that pops up when you hover over the image.
    – Alan Turing
    Dec 13, 2014 at 3:22
  • 1
    This is not great if you have large images, regardless of losing resolution. When you have an email with 14+ images it's possible to accidentally skip one. Since I use gmail for business, I can't afford to accidentally miss an image.
    – Xzila
    Oct 24, 2017 at 22:51
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  • Scroll to the bottom of the message and press the Forward button.
  • Each embedded attachment will now appear as a link with the option to delete (x).
  • If you click on the name of the image it will download.

This procedure saved a file size of 2,354,359 bytes (2.4 MB on disk) with embedded camera meta data (Camera type and settings). For the same images using the right click->Save As technique only saved a file size of 1,126,377 bytes (1.1 MB on disk). Both techniques produced an image with the resolution of 1944 × 2592 but there is obviously some compression in the images shown on the web page.

This test was done on Google Chrome browser for Mac.

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  • 4
    Even when clicking "forward", the images still appear embedded and without any attachment links at the bottom.
    – Sparkler
    Aug 17, 2015 at 23:14
  • Worked for me, Chrome on W7. Tx
    – akaAlso
    Dec 15, 2016 at 20:34
  • I have had this succeed in the past. I just encountered an email with 14 embedded images that are bigger than window, and when I tried this it only put a few at the bottom of forward email to conveniently download and the rest were still embedded. Oh, google.
    – Xzila
    Oct 24, 2017 at 22:50
  • Same experience as @Sparkler. Email from Mail for Windows 10.
    – Steve Crane
    Feb 27, 2018 at 10:18
  • Doesn't work on Version 65.0.3325.162 (Official Build) (64-bit).
    – 2540625
    Mar 30, 2018 at 21:06
3

I have an answer but it requires forwarding the email to a yahoo email account. From the yahoo email account you can then download all the images at once. The option is at the bottom of the email. It will download the images into a zip file.

If there are lots of pics it is worth setting up a yahoo account just to do this!

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    can't find any such option!
    – coding_idiot
    Apr 27, 2016 at 5:25
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It seems to be an issue with the way these images are embedded into the email. Normally you would get a download all if the attachments button was used.

It is on the top right of the images and it looks like an arrow.

However if you don't have that option the images are embedded. You only have the Google Drive Icon.

So what you need to do is click on the Drive icon and Save them all to Drive. Create a New Folder when it asks to keep them organized. Once in Drive go to the folder and select all the images in the folder, there is a button to select all. Now download. It will download them in a zip file that you can extract to wherever you want them.

Just remember in the future if you send a lot of photos, use the attach button.

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  • 1
    I can't find the Drive icon. A screenshot would strengthen this answer.
    – aparente001
    Aug 18, 2018 at 13:43
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In the latest Gmail :

  1. Simply click on the image and it'll start a slideshow.

  2. Slide through the images and click on the Download icon on the top-header.

It's better than downloading the entire page and then finding appropriate images in the folder. Or right-clicking on each individual image, especially if the images are large.

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  • There doesn't seem to be a great method, but I like this method the most as it allows you, albeit slow, to not miss any of the images by accident.
    – Xzila
    Oct 24, 2017 at 22:52
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I usually do as follows:

  1. show original (it can be found in more menu that is next to reply button)
  2. download original
  3. munpack original_msg.txt (this is a Linux command, but I have the Linux subsystem on Windows 10)

This extracts all images and retains their original filenames.

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1
  • This is the best method I've seen that keeps the image filenames intact.
    – zanbri
    Mar 26, 2020 at 14:26
1

Take a screen shot! Don't know about PCs, but on a Mac press command shift 4 at the same time, then draw a rectangle around each image. When you let go it will be saved on the desktop. Rename as you see fit.

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2
  • This will reduce quality down to the level of the preview... images usually have a lot more detail than you can see on screen.
    – Ben Voigt
    May 15, 2015 at 0:48
  • This is just what I needed. My wife had sent me a screenshot of a serial number I wanted to transcribe. I wanted to save the image to photos, crop it, and attach the cropped image to a note for easily seeing it and transcribing. In retrospect, I should have just used my computer.
    – Brian Rothstein
    Mar 16, 2016 at 16:46
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My solution for this problem is by using Thunderbird

Set Up

Set up your gmail account via the Existing Mail Account wizard in Thunderbird. It's easy. You just insert your preferred name and your gmail's email address and password. If you have typed them correctly, a web page will open after this step that ask for Thundebird-Gmail pair confirmation. Accept it.

Download Photos

  1. Before opening the mail that has the images, go to View->Message Body As-> Plain Text

  2. Now open your mail.

  3. On the bottom right corner there will be a button : Save All

This will save all the attachments that the mail has inside, including the images.

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1
  • Thank you!! For any Thunderbird user (such as myself), this is the BEST solution.
    – aparente001
    Aug 18, 2018 at 13:42
0

Here is a possible solution.

I forward the email to my Yahoo account. From there, right-click on the embedded image and select the View Image option. Yahoo will display the original picture at the original resolution. You can then right-click to save that picture.

FYI: Just taking a screen shot or right-click to "Save Image" is not a good solution because, if the embedded image was high resolution, you would only be able to recover a low-res, almost thumbnail of the original attachment.

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  • 1
    Opinions and personal feelings about services are not helpful to answering questions and should be avoided. Also this solution does not really solve the original question which was about finding an easier solution over having to manually save each individual image. This solution effectively only adds an extra step to the exact same process as the op did not express any concern about getting the image at any higher resolution then the one provided in the email.
    – Bradley A. Tetreault
    Aug 3, 2014 at 22:48
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I ran into the same problem when one of my clients sent me a ton of embedded images instead of attaching them.

I didn't find anything that did not require a separate mail client so I simply wrote a little Google Script that consolidates all the attachments of your multiple starred threads into a zip file and saves it to your Google Drive.

I've explained the script in this post.

I'm also posting the instructions below:

  1. Star the threads/conversations in your Gmail whose attachments you want to be saved.
  2. Run the script by clicking this Google Script link.
  3. After you click the link, sign in to Google (if you haven’t already done so) and give it permissions to access Gmail. It will get the attachments from a maximum of ten starred threads and create a zipped file named downloadAttachments.zip that will be placed in the root folder of your Google Drive.
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1
  • Could you revise to be JS I simply copy–paste into my browser console?
    – 2540625
    Mar 30, 2018 at 21:13
0

On the Android Gmail app, you can longpress an embedded image, then "View image", then "Save all" from the top right menu on the image preview screen, and it downloads all embedded images So, if none of the web options below are practical but you have an Android phone to hand, you could do that then copy the files from the phone.

This was the only solution that worked for me after trying everything else. But instead of downloading all the images, I chose Share all from the hamburger menu and then forwarded all the images to my email account.

The images arrive as attachments, which I was able to directly download to my HD.

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-1

I printed the whole email as a single PDF, then used the "PDF to jpg" tool on ilovepdf.com (free) to extract all the images into a zip file which I then just unzipped. So easy once I figured it out!

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1
  • Is "So easy" meant to be sarcastic here? That's a lot of steps.
    – gerrit
    Aug 11, 2022 at 7:22
-4

The answer is to right click and choose "view image". That will allow you to save as JPG.

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  • 1
    That's what the Asker is doing. The preferred solution is to download them all at once.
    – ale
    Jun 9, 2015 at 11:23

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