Apple Mail, not showing inline image in subscription emails

[Dave__M]

We're having an issue on our Mac machines, where subscription emails sent from Power BI do not show the report image in the email body.

The inline image in the email body just shows as a grey box with a GUID:

In looking at the raw email, it seems the Power BI Service is setting the wrong MIME types for the images.

The inline PNG image that isn't displaying has the wrong MIME type (should be image/png not image/png/octet-stream):

Content-Type: image/png/octet-stream; name=7b1aca2dc11e48c3a8ac70ad02577d5a
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

Even the attached PNG image has the wrong MIME type (should be image/png not application/octet-stream):

Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="Sample - Report.png"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Sample - Report.png"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

These emails are sent to an Exchange Server mailbox, and then downloaded by the Apple Mail client.  The same email viewed on a Windows machine (in Outlook) displays fine; we're guessing that it's just being more forgiving than the Apple Mail app.

Our users said this just started a month or so ago, so is it possible that this bug in the Power BI Service was recently introduced?

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Dave

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @Dave__M ,Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.

I suggest you try the 4th, 5th and 6th steps provided by @collinq . If the issue still persists, try the following.

1. Try accessing the subscription emails using a different email client on a Mac (like Microsoft Outlook for Mac or a web-based email client) to check if the issue persists. If the problem only appears in Apple Mail, it might be a compatibility issue with Apple Mail’s handling of the MIME type.
2. Ensure that both Apple Mail and macOS are up to date. Sometimes, Apple releases patches that address compatibility issues with specific email formatting or MIME types.
3. Review any recent updates or changes to the Power BI service that may have affected how reports are sent via email subscriptions. If this issue started after a specific Power BI update, it may be worth reporting the issue to Microsoft support, as it could be a bug that was introduced in the latest release.  They might be able to investigate the issue further or provide a solution or workaround.

Below is the link to create Microsoft Support ticket:

How to create a Fabric and Power BI Support ticket - Power BI | Micro...

Note: If the issue is urgent, consider having users manually download the report or use a different email client temporarily (like Outlook for Mac or web-based clients) to ensure they still have access to the reports until the issue is resolved.

If you think this post helps, please mark it as Accept as Solution, so others with similar queries may find it more easily.

[Dave__M]

Hello,

Thank you for the quick replies, really appreciate it.

We've reviewed the article from @collinq (thank you), but don't believe it applies here.  We downloaded the EML sent from Power BI, and tried sending it twice... once with the incorrect MIME types and once with the correct MIME types.  We confirmed that only the one with the incorrect MIME types exhibited this behaviour, so the issue is within the EML format, and not anything to do with any configuration settings.

@v-hashadapu thank you as well, here's the answers to your questions:

1. We have tried this, and confirmed that the malformed (wrong MIME type) emails do display properly in Outlook for Mac.  This was using another Mac... but unfortunately the users on the two Macs with issues don't have Outlook for Mac installed (and don't want to switch email clients just to deal with the Power BI subscription email issues).  Note: This does indicate that Outlook is more forgiving in dealing with invalid MIME types than Apple Mail is.
2. This is (as of a week or so ago) on the most up to date versions: MacOS Sequoia 15.1.1, and Mail 16.0 (3826.200.121)
3. We did look in the release notes of Power BI for anything that might indicate a change to subscription email formatting, but had no luck.  We will look into how to open a support ticket with Microsoft support.

We've tried everything we could think of, even got a test Mac and replicated the issue but couldn't find any configuration settings that would fix the issue.

I think (?) that our only options are to submit a ticket to Microsoft and wait for them to investigate and fix the format issue, or hope Apple updates Mail to not be so strict on dealing with malformed MIME types.  I don't think either option will happen quickly; was hoping someone out there had a magic solution to make our Mac users happy.

Thank you again,

Dave

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @Dave__M , sorry to hear that.

Please let us know if there is anything to help including on how to raise a ticket. 

Hoping your issue gets resolved soon.

[Dave__M]

@v-hashadapu thank you, if you could help me with how to raise a ticket, I'd really appreciate it.

(I did try to figure it out in Power BI, but it keeps asking for a support contract, which I don't believe we have.  All our users are licensed for Power BI Pro... not sure if that prevents us from reporting issues or not.)

Dave

[v-hashadapu · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dave__M , 

        1. Power BI Pro users can indeed create a support ticket. 

        2. if your organisation has a Unified or Premier support plan, select them (please ask your adminstrator to know your support plan). If not please select Microsoft Fabric Subsription.

     
I hope this helps. Please comeback if you have any more queries. If not (and this works), please mark it 'Accept as Solution'.

[Dave__M]

My goodness, thank you @v-hashadapu ... we had several people here looking at this and we all just assumed "Microsoft Fabric Subscription" was a header, and we didn't even try clicking on it.

This does work for opening a ticket, thank you!

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @Dave__M , Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.

Happy to know it works for you. If you have any further queries regarding this, please share the details. If not, please mark it 'Accept as Solution', so others with similar queries may find it more easily. 

[collinq]

HI @Dave__M ,

I do not know anything about APple mail, but I am wondering if this link, numbers 4, 5 or 6 about settings might be helpful?  10 Best Fixes for Images Not Loading in Mail App on Mac- The Mac Observer