Image compression not working

[Paolo Marini]

Hello everyone,

I am using Outlook 2007 but don't seem to be able to compress the images.
Here are the steps to reproduce the behaviour.

1. Create a new email message.
2. Press the PrintScreen key.
3. Paste the image in the body of the email (either as Bitmap or Device
Independent Bitmap).
4. Select the image.
5. Click on Picture Tools > Format > Compress Pictures.
6. Select the checkbox "Apply to selected pictures only" (doesn't really
make any difference).
7. Click on Options...
8. Select the first two checkboxes (Automatically..., Delete...).
9. Select the last radio button (E-mail 96ppi).
10. Click on OK and then OK.
11. Save the message (without sending it).
12. Open the Drafts folder and check the size of the image: 3MB!).

Although the PrintScreen is capturing both monitors, there is no reason why
the relevant JPEG compressed image should be 3MB.
Also, even if I didn't try to compress the image, the size would have stayed
the same (3MB).
In practice, the compression options don't seem to make any difference
whatsoever.

Is there something like a registry hack that could have disabled this
functionality?

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Paolo

 

[Roady [MVP]]

That function works as it should. I believe you have the wrong impression of
what this option does; it reduces the size of the image by dropping the
information of the picture that you cropped and sets the current dimensions
as 100%.

You didn't resize the image nor cropped it so there is nothing to compress.
Also, note that you paste it in the bmp-format and not in the jpg-format.
The compress feature doesn't change the file format of the picture.

If you want to send it in the jpg-format, then paste it to an image editor
first and resize it to its correct proportions and crop if necessary. Then
in Outlook choose Insert-> Picture...

 

[Paolo Marini]

Hi Roady,

I have finally found what the problem was. By default my messages where
going out as Rich Text rather than HTML.

In fact, even using the Insert Picture from file with a jpg image of about
138KB, the message in the draft folder was appearing as 4MB big, no matter
how I tried to compress the image.

As soon as I switched the message format to HTML, the problem went away.

By the way, the Compress picture functionallity seems to work even when you
paste bitmap files.

Thanks anyway for your help.

Regards,
Paolo

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Good to hear you've found your solution and thanks for sharing.

By the way, the Compress picture functionallity seems to work even when
you
paste bitmap files.

I know, I never stated otherwise. Bmp is an uncompressed file format so
larger by definition than compressed file formats like jpg and png. I
recommended using those file formats instead as they are already much
smaller than then bmp-file to begin with.

 

[Blitzen]

Outlook 2007

I have recently upgraded to Outlook 2007 and have noticed that pictures embedded in e-mails are shrunken down to thumbnail size. I have to stretch every one of them out, unless I have it saved as a signature...if it's a signature, it's the correct size.

I use a lot of graphics as signatures in e-mails, but I don't have them all saved in Outlook as signatures, if that makes sense. I go to my files and embed them, and that is when they are small.

I have heard that changing the format to rich text is a solution but when I did that, I could no longer click on or highlight links in e-mails. In order to register for this forum, I had to save the e-mail as a text file and highlight it from there. Needless to say, this is very frustrating.

I know Microsoft is trying to protect us, but it's really annoying when they take things away that we're used to using, like seeing graphic attachments in Outlook 2003...I'm glad that feature is back in 2007, but it seems like they enjoy taking things away while they bring other things back. What will they take away when they bring this graphic thing back? I hate to think...seeing attachments?

Are there any suggestions? I can't possibly save all my graphics as signatures...I think Outlook would explode LOL.

Thank you,
Donna