Sending and Receiving Email Attachments

This document explains what email attachments are and describes some strategies for using them effectively. It describes how major online services handle attachments, and recommends file types for sending multimedia information via email

 

Online activists often need to exchange richly formatted documents such as grant proposals, action alerts, and reports-documents that were originally created in word processing programs and containing formatting elements such headers and footers, boldfacing, underlining, and changes in font and type size.

Email protocols were designed before word processing became commonplace, and were intended only for messages containing plain text, without any of the bells and whistles that make long documents readable and appealing.  Newer email programs do support sending formatted documents using HTML, but older email programs may have trouble reading these messages.  However, you can use file attachments to send word processor documents via email.

When you create an attachment, your email program converts, or encodes, a word processor file, with all of its formatting information, into a code of alphanumeric characters (numbers and letters) that can be sent across the Internet as part of an email message. The encoded file is typically appended-or attached-to a brief note that attached file: "Hey, here's our most recent action alert. It's an attached Microsoft Word 6.0 file."

Sending and receiving attachments is often frustrating because it involves a number of variables; people use different email programs, different computer systems, and different word processing programs, whose files are often not fully compatible with each other. Any of these can cause trouble with attachments. For example, a person running Microsoft Word for Windows 95 on a PC may have trouble using Netscape Mail to send an attachment to a person using a Mac SE, a simple terminal program, and Claris Works. Unless everyone magically standardizes on a single platform, a single email program, and a single word processing program, attachments will continue to be a source of headaches.

Whew! Does that mean that you shouldn't bother sending attachments? The answer is a qualified no. Used properly, email can be the one of the quickest and easiest ways to share formatted documents with other activists. The following tips will help you a void some of the most common pitfalls of attachments.

Rules for using email attachments

1. Know what kind of system your intended recipient is using. If you're both using the same operating system, the same word processing program and a common email program such as Eudora, Pegasus, Exchange, or Netscape, then you're not likely to ha ve problems. However, when you send an attached word processor file, it will appear on the other end as the exact same type of file. The recipient must have hardware and software that can read that file.

   For example, if you attach an MS Word file, and the recipient of your message is using a word processor that can't open MS Word files (like ClarisWorks), that person isn't going to be able to open your attachment. In situations like this you should either reformat your document as a plain text file or save it as an RTF file and send that (see Tip #3).

   Notes: MS Word and WordPerfect can generally open each others' files with a minimum of fuss. Word 6.0 for Mac can open Word 6.0 for Win 3.x and Word 7.0 for Windows 95 documents and vice-versa. 

2. Don't ever send attachments to email lists. On large lists, people of many different skill levels will be using all sorts of different combinations of email and word processing programs; it's virtually certain that some of them will be unable to receive your attachment.
   
3. When you're not sure what word processor your recipient has, send RTF (rich text formatted) files. Although some word processors are able to open some other word processors' files, translation continues to be a sticky problem. RTF is a standard file format that virtually all word-processors can read. RTF includes basic formatting information, such as changes in font, point size, and bold/italics/underlining. Most word processors will have a "Save as" option that will allow you save yo ur file in a variety of different formats, including RTF.

Recommended File Types for Attachments

Although this document has focused on sending word processor files as attachments, you can attach virtually any type of file to an email message, including spreadsheets, graphics, and audio files. Doing so is not without risk; if the recipient doesn't have an application that can open the file format you've chosen, you'll be out of luck. Although many applications that run on Windows run on the Macintosh as well, many people on the Internet-especially folks in academia-use UNIX-based systems to read their mail. With this in mind, here are some tips on the best cross-platform formats to use if you're sending a file to someone using a different operating system.

AUDIO RealAudio and MP3 have become the most widely accepted standards for online audio..

DRAWINGS EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is a good choice for files created in drawing programs such as Freehand and Illustrator.

GRAPHICS GIF is the standard WWW graphics. BMP (bitmap) will also work in a pinch, as they are readable by most PC and MAC graphics programs.

PHOTOGRAPHS JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is the best standard for photos that are destined for WWW publication, as JPEG files are quite compact. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is also good, especially if you require ultra-high image quality.

SPREADSHEETS Save spreadsheets as tab-delimited or comma-delimited text, rather than in the application's native format. (You'll see this option in the Save As menu of your spreadsheet program.)

TEXT FILES RTF (Rich Text Format) is ideal for including formatting that can be read by both PCs and Macs. (See tip #3 above)

For more information

Microsoft's Word 97-2000 Converter for Word 6.0-95 , which allows Word 95 and Word 6.0 for Windows users to open documents created in Word 97 or Word 98, can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web site at:
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadDetails/wd97cnv.htm

The Microsoft Word 97-98-2000 Import Converter for the Macintosh allows Word 6.0 and Word 5.1 for Mac users to open documents created in Word 97 or Word 98, and can be downloaded from:
http://www.microsoft.com/macoffice/prodinfo/office/coexist.htm

06/29/2001

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