Email pictures (gifs) not showing, how can I redownload them?

Question

Hi,
I have an issue where I am receiving regular emails with picture attachments in GIF format.  However, despite the images being roughly the same size, with the same characteristics (pixels/inch,RGB,etc) sometimes the image shows in the email and sometimes it does now.  I have fiddled with the automatically download picture setting but it doesn't have any effect.  Curiously, if I uncheck the automatic download it doesn't give me an option to download them manually but still seems to be automatically displaying them.
I suspect the problem with the emails where the image is not displayed is that I had very poor cellular signal at the time of reception, probably with the signal cutting out whilst the image file was in the process of downloading.  In fact, with several images only half the content has appeared on screen with the rest showing as white which I think is probably the same problem.
Is there a way I can get the email program to download the message again?  The images that do not show just have a blue question mark icon and don't give me any options when I long press on them.
Any help would be appreciated,
James.

Answer 1

Also:   You said:        I did try forwarding the original e-mail from the inbox before deleting it and when it arrived and I opened the email it said 'unable to download attachment'.
Here are just some of the most common reasons legitimate emails with attachments may not make it through or the email makes it through but not the attachment especially when forwarding.
Spam/Virus Filters: perhaps the largest issue is that many viruses that attempt to send themselves in email as attachments. As a result ISPs, mail programs and mail servers have all had to become extremely suspicious of any and all attachments.
So an attachment counts against you when the recipient's spam filter analyzes your incoming mail. If it has an attachment, it's somewhat more likely to be considered spam, and filtered or blocked accordingly.
Attachment Blockers: for the very same reason that mail systems are looking at attachments as a bad thing, many email programs now come pre-configured to actually block access to some or all attachments. The recipient must somehow indicate that attachments are alright. Depending on their email program, this may be something that they can configure by file type (allow ".jpg" attachments, but not ".exe"), by sender (usually by adding the sender's email address to an address book or contact list), or globally.
Size Matters: as the internet slowly gets faster and faster many consider this as becoming less and less of an issue, but in fact we're keeping up by having and trying to transfer larger and larger files. The fact is large files always have been a problem, and ISPs regularly disallow emails that exceed a certain size. The problem, of course, is that even though "a certain size" might be getting larger over time, it will also vary from ISP to ISP, if they do this. Thus even if your ISP allows you to send a large file, that doesn't mean that your recipient's ISP will allow him to receive it.
Larger files are an issue because of the time it takes to send them, and the disk space required to hold them on the multiple servers they traverse as they make their way from point A to point B. Unlike simply copying a file from one machine to another, where only two machines are impacted, email travels across several servers and each of those must have the space to hold your files and an internet connection fast enough to receive and transmit it in a reasonable amount of time, along with everything else that server might be doing.
I hope this helps.