Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

I worship at the church of Gmail. I’m really, really satisfied with the website, with one minor exception: Gmail does not have built in functionality to add a picture in the body of an email. Why? I have no idea. But it’s an annoyance, even though I send a picture in the body of an email only about once a month.

I spent a few hours searching the internet for solutions and finally found one, but it was buried pretty deeply in the internet (sounds funny when I write it that way). So, I figured I’d make my own guide for those lost souls who desperately want to add a photo in the body of their email, as the solution is easy, but annoyingly so.

Step 1: Find your picture:

Step 2: Open Google Docs. If you haven’t activated Google Docs on your Gmail account, no problem. It takes just a couple of seconds. Go to http://docs.google.com/ and sign in with your Gmail account. Problem solved. Now, go there and create a new “Document.”

Step 3: Insert a picture:

(Hint: It’s a good idea to hit return a couple times, then insert the picture as it makes it easier to select the picture afterward.)

Step 4: Once you’ve inserted your picture, select the line above it, the picture, and the line below it by dragging your cursor or selecting the top line, holding Shift, and selecting the bottom line:

Step 5: Now copy the picture to your clipboard (Control+C) and paste it into Gmail:

Voila!  You can now send pictures in your Gmail emails.  Now send the engineers at Google an email telling them to add this functionality so you don’t have to go through all of this.