Converting Outlook email to PDF - Missing Images

[Andres2676636970hn]

Hello everyone. In my orginisation some of my staff have reported issues when attempting to convert an Outlook email that contains inline images to PDF using the Acrobat toolbar. After doing some research this seems to be an ongoing issue for some. There are posts suggesting to check the plugin settings to "Block download of external content" or checking other Page Display settings. These tips did not help for our intermittent issues converting emails to PDF. After some testing I was able to consistently recreate the problem and have determined the cause for this issue. However I have not yet found the solution. Here are my findings.

• I created a test email that included an inline image and sent it to myself. I opened the email in Outlook and used the Acrobat toolbar to convert the received email to PDF. The PDF opened and displayed the email with the inline image. 
• I then saved the Outlook email to my desktop File > Save As > Desktop and made sure that "Outlook Message Format - Unicode" was selected as the file type. I saved the email, and then opened the email file from my dekstop. I then used the Acrobat toolbar to convert the email to PDF. This time I successfully recreated the problem with the images being missing from the PDF.
  • The images are actually still there, they are now just located in the "Attachments" toolbar.
  • The images are no longer inline as they were in the test email. 

I believe that this is a bug that has existed in Acrobat for quite a long time. Although I seem to have found what is causing the issue, I do not have a great work around for my staff. In particular I have one staff who has to convert potentially thousands of email to PDF; sending the saved email as a new email everytime can become a very time consuming task.

If you are also experiencing issues with images in email when converting to PDF please share your experience below. 

[Alexander35477805lrx8 · Accepted solution]

I have noticed this exact same behavior. We ended up forwarding the email to ourselves and then converting it.  However printing to PDF showed the images. 

[adob73]

I am just wondering if Adobe plan to address this issue? I have seen it mentioned by many users. 

Having to forward an email to yourself doesn't sound like an acceptable workaround for a premium product. 

The free "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer driver that is accessable to Outlook produces perfect PDF files without missing inline graphics. Can we please also have this in the "Save as Adobe PDF" plug-in in Outlook?

(Yes, the ribbon option in Outlook has been deselected: Acrobat > Change Conversion Settings > Deselect 'Block Download of External content')