[Android Central Question]

I have been trying to find a solution to this problem for a few weeks now and I am finally asking in this forum as I am so close to going crazy and going back to iPhone due to this issue.

I have a Samsung S8+ and I email pictures and videos from my laptop to my own email on my phone so I can upload them to Instagram since there is no official way to upload pics and vids from your desktop to Instagram.

However, depending on the mood that my S8+ is in, when I try to save the pics and vids from the email to my phone, 70% of the time the items will save into my gallery on the phone. The other 30% when the phone is moody it saves them into ‘My Files’ on the phone and not in the gallery. The phone literally picks at random what goes where. I have experimented with pic sizes, shapes etc and the phone still randomly throws them in either the gallery or My Files.

The problem with pics being in ‘My Files’ is that Instagram does not allow you to upload pics and videos that are in the 'My Files’ folder on the phone.

I have tried a file manager but once again there is no file manager that allows me to move items to my gallery.

I tried using three different email systems, gmail, the inbuilt phone email and an independent email app to see if that made a difference but the phone still picks and chooses where it wants to put my attachments. It can’t be predicted it just does it randomly.

Long pressing on the pics/vids within the email does not give me an option to save into the gallery or any folder within the gallery. Long pressing gives the options of; Save, Save to, Share, Open in.

Now I realize if I click ‘Share’ I can share it straight to Instagram however this is not the solution as I need the pics to be in my gallery so I can edit, crop, filter make collages etc

I just want to be able to save pics to my gallery. On iPhones within an email you have the option to ‘Save to gallery’ I can’t believe that Samsung would make such a simple task so impossible.

Does anybody know a solution to this problem before I switch back to an awful iPhone. I use Instagram several hours per day for my businesses and I can no longer have this issue slowing me down daily.

[shadowsjc]

Are you using the built-in gallery App? or a different 3rd party gallery? if it's the built in gallery app, hit the 3 dots button (top right hand corner), hit settings, then scroll to the bottom to "About gallery". See if it says you have the latest version installed (on mine it's 5.3.17.311). if not, it may ask you to update the app. see if that helps.

Also, this might help - in the Instagram app, click the "+" button (lower middle of the Insta app). It will default to your "My gallery" view. in the top left hand corner of the screen (next to the "X"), it will say "Gallery". Click that, and it will open a drop down menu. These are all the different locations (folders) in your phone where you have pictures saved. You can change it so that it's not pointing to "Gallery" (it could be that the pics/vids you are looking for are being saved in a different folder - maybe Downloads)

[paulaki]

Hi shadowsjc, yep my gallery is the latest version 5.3.17.311.

Previously I had already explored the other idea you mention with the drop down menu from Instagram and yes after digging around I can get to the pics and vids that appear in 'My Files' however they are either grayed out which means I can't select it, or in the case of a vid when I tried it, it flicks to Instagram momentarily then flicks back to 'My Files' and doesn't allow me to send it via Instagram or I thought it may save in drafts but it doesn't.

Believe me I have spent many hours trying to resolve this and there really is no way. I was hoping by the off chance that perhaps there was something I was missing but I am starting to believe it is a gross error on Android phones. After reading forum after forum its not an exclusive problem just on the S8+ but all Android phones.

I understand that the phone is doing the right thing by saving it to 'My Files' as the Gallery is simply an app, however, it doesn't explain why sometimes pics will save to the gallery and other times in 'My Files'. There is no logical reason for that to be happening. I even did a test. I repeatedly sent myself the same picture via the same email system multiple times (7 times in fact) and I could save the same pic to my gallery each time. I was attempting to get the same pic to eventually save to 'My Files' only and you guessed it, after seven attempts suddenly on the 8th attempt that very same picture that saved 7 times to my gallery then decided to save only to 'My Files.'... it really makes no sense for the phone to pick and choose when it wants to save to gallery and when it wants to save to 'My Files'... unless the phone is becoming self aware and wants to do its own thing

It really is a problem that needs to be addressed by Samsung considering that 99% of Samsung users would also be Instagram users I suspect and considering there are forums after forums of people with the same issue I'm surprised it hasn't already been resolved by Samsung.

[shadowsjc]

"My Files" and "Gallery" are both just apps. They are not locations on your phone. Your phone saves files (pictures/videos/documents) in folders similar to how Windows computers have folders. For example, when you take a picture on your phone, it saves it in the folder called "Camera" (by default). You can access the "Camera" folder by either opening your "Gallery" app, or by opening your "My Files" app. The only difference between the two apps (Gallery and My Files) is that Gallery will only show you pics/videos, but My Files will show you all files (including text, PDFs, etc.).

[Centerman66]

Try a good file management app like solid Explorer. Then share files to solid Explorer from your email.

[ChiefDog]

Try a good file management app like solid Explorer. Then share files to solid Explorer from your email.

I also have a great deal of trouble finding downloads on my phone, even with Solid Explorer.

[commmtech]

A friend and I were trying to figure out why, a picture I sent him in an email, wouldn't save and allow him to open it with "gallery". Yet, sent him the same picture yesterday and he can save/find that just fine. Ok, turns out that the pic I sent him yesterday was a .png, and it saved with yesterday's date. However, the pic I just sent him, I resaved as a .jpg. (All I did was open the pic and "save as" then saved as the .jpg.) Turns out that, apparently, the phone used the meta data from the original pic to get the date, and when we scrolled through his pictures using "gallery", sure enough, there it was under 6-8-2018. So, your phone may be saving the pics, but, just not using the date that you think it should or would.

Yeah, that might still be a PITA to deal with, but, if that is what your phone is doing, and you know it, you might be able to rename the pic, before saving, to something that you can then sort by some method that will let you know exactly where to find it.

Just a thought.

KM