Inline gif in automated e-mail?

[jws]

I am trying to send an automated message with outlook.

I want to avoid using a hosted image from a URL, and have an inline image in the mail.

This help page shows this is possible by inserting a “render at html” grid or a list, but I can’t make it work: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051028394#:~:text=How%20can%20I,your%20HTML%20tags

Instead of the image appearing, I get either a ticked checkbox or the name of the field.

Can anyone enlighten me what is going wrong?

[Justin_Barrett · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the community, @jws! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: You say that you can’t make it work, but we don’t know what method you’re attempting. Would you be able to share a screenshot or two showing how you’re trying to set this up? The more specific details you can share, the easier it’ll be to figure out how to guide you in the right direction.

I’ve helped a couple of clients to add images to email templates, and in both cases the easiest way that I’ve found to host the images is to create an “Images” table, with each record containing a single image in an attachment field. A formula field can be used to extract the hosted URL, and you can use that URL when building an <img> tag in the email template, along with styling to control the image size and placement.

[jws · Accepted solution]

That sounds like it would work. Can you point me to some instructions, or show me your example?

Here are some screenshots showing my attempt to follow the official instructions I previously linked and the end result:

Record with image:

Template for automate e-mail:

Resulting e-mail received:

[Justin_Barrett · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the details. When you tested the trigger step (which you didn’t show in your screenshots), had you added the image to the {Image1} field yet? If not, that’s probably the reason that you’re not seeing the image in the email.

If you change data in a record after using that record to test your trigger step, the trigger step is still operating on a version of the record without that change. In your case, if you tested the trigger before adding the image, the later steps—including the “Outlook: send email” action—won’t get the image. You’ll need to re-test the trigger first before the email step will get that image.

[jws · Accepted solution]

My trigger in this case is that the checkbox “Test Image” is checked. The image1 attachment in the record has remained there untouched through my testing.

But maybe I misunderstand you?

To paraphrase the instructions, what should happen is:

1. Record has image as attachment
2. In template, select render list as html and select the field with the image
3. Image should appear inline when sent.

Is that right? Or is there something I am missing?

[Justin_Barrett · Accepted solution]

That’s correct. I haven’t used that method before, but I just tested it and it works, though it’s not really the best way to insert an inline image. You also get the attachment field name above the image (“Attachment” in my test case), and you have no control over the image placement or size. In this test, the actual image is fairly large, but this is all I get when using the list insertion option:

First let’s figure out why the image isn’t appearing for you. As I said above, the setup that you described is correct, but from your screenshot it looks like you inserted only the {Test Image} checkbox field, not the {Image1} field. Delete the lower two items from your email template, then add a new item that only inserts the {Image1} field as an HTML list. Once that’s done, please run the test again and let us know what happens.

[jws · Accepted solution]

Ok, that was it. I had selected the checkbox field instead of the attachment. That is why it was showing a checkbox. ahaha

It is however not really a solution, as you say, since it just shows a small thumbnail.

Can you share your method in more detail please?

[Justin_Barrett · Accepted solution]

Sure, but I’m stepping away for the weekend. I’ll break down the process for you on Monday.

[jws · Accepted solution]

Ok, great. Thank you

[Justin_Barrett · Accepted solution]

@jws Here’s the basic rundown:

1. Drop your desired image into an attachment field in a new table.

2. Create a formula field named {Attachment URL} using this formula (replacing “Attachments” with the name of your attachment field), which will give you the direct URL of the attached image:

IF(Attachments, REGEX_EXTRACT(Attachments, "(?:[^(]*\\()([^)]*)"))

3. In your email template, add an <img> tag where you want to insert the image into your email. To insert the image at its native size, this is all you need:

<img src="URL_FROM_FORMULA_FIELD" />

If you need to scale the image to fit specific dimensions, you’ll need to look into CSS styling using the style attribute. For example, to render the image at 25% of its native size:

<img src="URL_FROM_FORMULA_FIELD" style="width:25%;height:25%" />