I've managed to solve this problem, kind of...

The reason I did not see my background images is because they were not included in the email. There is a setting in Outlook that insted of sending url of the image, it includes it as an attachment, but the background images were not included as attachments for some reason, all i had to do is include them in my email additionally underneath all my content and give them width and height of zero, and set the style display:none.

that did the trick but only works if recieved thru outlook, for me it's ok because this is all internal email and everyone here uses outlook.

I tried sending email with the option of not attaching the image and using absolute path, and that works, except in outlook you have to click to show images, otherwise thy're hidden. :rolleyes: