Table of Contents

Adding Hyperliked Pics to eMails:

How To Add Hyper-linked Pics to Your eMails

What you will need:

1. A membership of Dropbox (or any other web storage site which allows public access URLs). A free membership of Dropbox gives you a minimum 2 GB of online storage!

I find Dropbox an essential these days. All of CanadianGay files are stored on it. As well as that, many of my iPhone and iPod apps have links to it.

To get Dropbox, click here: Get Dropbox
(By using this link you will also earn me another 250 MB storage to use for CanadianGay.)

You will need to register, download the app to your computer – it works on Mac and Windows – and install it.

EITHER

2. A GMail Account - preferably one which is a member of CanadianGay, but that is not essential. I really find GMail by far the best of the webmail services out there, and also better than most eMail apps. If you are a member of CanadianGay, you already have a Google account. Just use that account ID to activate your free 7GB mailbox Google email. Log in to any Google page and click on Gmail at the top left (or somewhere there). By doing it this way, the account will already be a member of CanadianGay.

OR

2. Thunderbird Mail App (for Mac or Windows). The instructions for using this may also work for other email apps but I am not about to test them all. It DOES work on Postbox, which is Mozilla-based.
Note: This may also work with Outlook mail on Windows, but I do not know for sure.

Step by Step:

  1. Open your desktop Dropbox. You do this by clicking on the icon (in your Menu Bar on Mac; in your Task Bar on Windows) and choosing "Open Dropbox Folder."
  2. Inside the folder called Public which already exists, create a new folder called CanGay or CG or something simple like that. Inside that folder create another one which easily identifies when it was created, such as Mar01. This will help when it comes to deleting them later.
  3. With this latest folder open, drag a pic file you want to send into the folder. A revolving blue "uploading" symbol will appear on the file. When it is fully uploaded, the blue symbol will turn into a green tick. Even before that finishes, you can right-click (Control-click on a Mac) and from the drop-down menu which appears choose Dropbox-->Copy Public link.
  4. Using Gmail:
    • Open Gmail webmail window and choose COMPOSE.
    • If this email account ID is a member of CanadianGay, just address it to [email protected] — If it is not a member, see below. Give the email a subject line.
    • Place the cursor in the body of the email where you want to place the image.
    • Click on the Insert Image button. (It looks like a little drawing of two mountains)
    • A window which says "Add and Image" pops up.
    • Choose Web Address (URL).
    • In the text box alongside "Image URL", paste the URL from you copied from Dropbox in step 3. A preview of the pic will apear.
    • Now click OK. (You may have to move the window up to get at the OK button on the bottom)
    • Finally, click Send.
    • NOTE: If this GMail account ID is NOT a member of CanadianGay, address the email to the ID which DOES belong to CanadianGay, and when it arrives, just forward it to CanadianGay

    5. OR

  5. Using Thunderbird:
    • Open Thunderbird (or Postbox), and click Write or Create New Message.
    • In the From line, choose the ID which is a member of CanadianGay.
    • Address the message to [email protected]
    • Give it a subject.
    • Place the cursor in the Body section of the email.
    • From the Menu/Menu Bar under Insert, choose Image ...
    • On the first tab, where is says Image Location, paste the URL you copied from Dropbox in Step 3.
    • IMPORTANT: UNCHECK "Attach this image to the message." If it is told to attach it, it will be sent as an attachment and be too large.
    • Check "Don't use alternate text"
    • Send.

A Couple More Notes:

DO NOT DELETE or move the pic file from the its location where you copied the URL. If you do, all people will see wil be a little red dot or a blank page in the email. Please leave them in Dropbox for a reasonable time. A week will be OK, but a month would be better. This is why I asked you to name the inmost folder clearly, so you can delete the whole thing at an appropriate date.

Before sending an email, you can repeat step 3 (adding pics and getting the URL) as often as you like, then just repeat the process of pasting this URL into the message you have already started. You can basically insert as many pics as you want, up to about 15 or 20.

If you use Mailplane, you can use the same directions as for Using GMail. It is basically the same thing.

As far as I can tell, the GMail method does NOT work on Yahoo Mail or Hotmail.