Images not loading in messages?

[nini9370]

Had had a buyer try to send me an attachment of the USPS slip that was given to them asking for additional payment to redeliver the package. I asked them to try to send it again, yet no images appear in either ebay messages or the personal email preview. I see the paperclip icon next to both ebay messages but there aren't any actual images there. I've tried disabling adblock and using a different browser but neither helped. 

How do I fix this?

[berserkerplanet · Accepted solution]

When you view the message there are no image thumbnails in the message?

The paperclip symbol indicates that the message logic thinks that message has attachments - whether my theory is correct that they are and the gallery display of them is failing, or that a flag indicating attachments got set but there really is no attachment content is the crux of the biscuit.

eBay uses an overly complex JavaScript image gallery mechanism, that may be what is failing for whatever reason. What you can do is look for the image links in the page source, and open them manually if they are there. If image(s) were actually attached there should be a link to a thumbnail image and the full size image for each attachment in the message.

1. While the message is open in your eBay messages inbox, hit Ctrl-U to open a page source window.
   That should display the raw HTML for that message page.
2. Hit CTRL-A then Ctrl-C to copy all that source code to the clipboard.
3. Open Notepad or some other TEXT editor (not Word or other rich text program) and hit Ctrl-V to paste the clipboard contents in.
4. Hit HOME key to go to top of pasted text
5. Hit CTRL-F to search. Search for:   ebayimg.com
6. Look at any link it finds. Should look something like:
   https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/A0AAAOSwSjpcYFnM/s-l1600.jpg
7. Copy that link and open it in a new tab. If it is what you are looking for save the image via Ctrl-S
8. If that isn't the right image or is just the thumbnail, hit F3 to find the next match. Rinse and repeat.

(The keyboard shortcuts used above can also be performed using right click context menu or browser edit menu commands like "select all", "copy", "paste", "find", "find next", "save link as",  etc)

If that search procedure is beyond your comfort level, you can send me the source, and I'll look at it and see if there are any attachments lost in there.

Perform the first 3 steps above, save that source in Notepad as msgsrc.txt, and PM me for further instructions to email it to me as an attachment.

Alternatively instead of saving it as a text file you could PM it to me by pasting it in a codebox in a private message (the </> symbol on the message editor menu), but that source will likely be more than 70k in size, the forum character limit is 60k characters per message, so unless you break it into 2 sub-60k character private messages it won't fly.

[shipscript]

Go to your eBay account settings under "Communication Preferences" and make sure that your email messages from eBay are set to "HTML" and not to "Text only".

Both sender and recipient must have HTML selected in order to send and receive photos in messages. However, if those settings are not correct, eBay usually issues a warning, or hides the attachment option, during message creation.

Since I have not tested this feature in several years, it's worth verifying here.

[berserkerplanet]

Doh?

So obvious (and in the past and out of mind) that never occurred to me. But I think I can test it since I have a dialog going between two of my accounts for testing...

The setting works, and the received message was text only. The attachment paperclip show in the inbox, but there is no sign of the attached photo(s) in the text format message.

HOWEVER, per my response in post #2
the image link IS buried in the source of even the text format eBay message, and it was trivial to hit CTRL-U, type ebayimg.com to search, right click and choose "copy link location", paste that link in a new tab, and view the attached image, and then save it if desired (CTRL-S).

I didn't test to see if the same think happens if the sender has text format selected, but suspect it should throw an error at creation/send time.

In summary:
The attachment "paperclip" icon shows in the inbox whether or not the receiver has their messaging set to text or HTML format, but even if the images are not visible in the eBay message as viewed from the eBay inbox in a browser, the link(s) to the images ARE in the page source of that viewed message and can be extracted.

[nini9370]

This worked!!! Thank you so much! 🙂

[berserkerplanet]

>>This worked!!! Thank you so much!

Awesome!

To clarify for myself and future others:
You were able to grab the link to the attached image from the eBay messaging page source and view/save it as I outlined?