Opening photos that come in your e-mail is easy

By Andy Walker

Question: I've never seen a comprehensive article about how to "open" a photograph sent by e-mail. My computer tells me I don't have imagevw.exe and therefore can't open a .jpg file. What is the best way to deal with photographs generally?

Answer: There are a few ways to handle pictures received by e-mail, and there are also some precautions you need to take. Here's a fairly comprehensive primer.

Images that come as e-mail attachments normally arrive in one of two file formats. They are either JPEG images and have the file extension .jpg like uncle_bobs_toupee.jpg, or they come as GIF images, as in aunt_thelmas_feet.gif.

Of course, baiting unsuspecting folks to open picture attachments is a favorite ploy of virus writers. New viruses or e-mail worms often will arrive disguised as a picture sent by a friend, but when you open the image, a program runs to infect your computer although, if that happens, you probably won't be aware of it while it's going on. If a picture attachment ends in VBS, as in evil-virus.jpg.vbs, don't open it—just delete it.

Get a virus checker that scans your e-mail as it comes in. I recommend BitDefender 10 Standard (download it here) or McAfee VirusScan (download it here). At the risk of alienating you, dear readers, I have to say you are nuts if you don't have one installed. If you don't have one, get one. Spend the $35 to $60. If you don't know how to get one, get help.

(Check our Emergency Help page for options on getting further assistance.)

Not having an anti-virus program installed on your computer these days is like leaving your door unlocked in a bad neighborhood and painting on the front of the house, "Come ransack my house—the door is unlocked."

I get a lot of e-mail worms—two or three a day sometimes. I avoid being infected by never opening a file attachment that I am not expecting, regardless of who appears to have sent it to me. Also, my virus checker scans everything that comes in, and I update it once a week with the free updates that are offered with the software.

That said, here's how to handle the images once you get them, and when you're sure they are safe to view.

Open the e-mail message and look for the file attachment near the top of the message window. This is normally indicated by an icon (often a paper clip), or it may just say "file attachment" with the name of the file next to it.

You have several choices here.

1. Quick but dangerous method: Open it from within the e-mail.

2. Foolproof method: Save it to your desktop and open it from there.

Let's tackle how to open it straight from e-mail first. Skip down this column if you want to learn how to do this using the foolproof method.

The quick method is to simply double-click the file attachment and wait for the system to open it in a default photo viewer. That's the program that your system has been instructed to use to open files of that type.

If all goes well, the program will open the picture and display it. If it's a virus disguised as a picture, your system will be infected, so do this only if you have followed the anti-virus precautions above.

If your system's default photo viewer is not configured properly, you will get an error, as our reader above is getting.

So here's what to do. You can install a free viewer from the web which, during installation, will ask you to pick the image types to associate with the image viewer. (Pick JPG, GIF and common image types such as PCX, BMP, and TIF or TIFF).

If you want to follow this advice, download the free Irfanview program from our Cyberwalker Software Library: Irfanview.

Once the viewer is installed and associated with JPGs, GIF files, and other common image files, the next time you open the photo attachment in e-mail, Irfanview will open the image for you without any further fuss.

But, let's say you are a sucker for punishment and want to do it the hard way by associating JPG and GIF images with an existing program on your computer. First walk up to a nearby wall and bang your head a few times. That's how this next piece of advice is going to feel, so now you know.

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