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Email attachments: sending and opening

by Barbara Feldman
Here's an overview of the three technical issues involved in attachments and tips on avoiding the most common problems

1) Compatible file formats
Before you send a file (whether it's a word processing document or an audio file), make sure your recipient has the software needed to read it. If they don't have the same software as you (for example Office 97), perhaps they have a viewer (such as Microsoft Word Viewer) that will let them open the documents. Those viewers, however, will not usually let the recipients modify the files in any way.

To avoid problems with file format incompatibility, send your files in a format that is widely used. Here are some of the most common file formats. To convert your files to these formats, use the Save As function in your software. You should be able to choose from a variety of formats presented in a drop-down list.

  • Audio: AIFF (audio interchange file format)
  • Drawings: EPS (encapsulated PostScript)
  • Graphics: GIF (graphics interchange format) or BMP (bitmap)
  • Photographs: JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) or TIFF (tagged image file format)
  • Spreadsheets or Data Bases: Tab-delimited or comma-delimited text.
  • Video: QuickTime
  • Word Processing Documents: RTF (rich text format)

2) Using File Compression
Compression is the process of making large files smaller. Sometimes you may choose to compress a file; sometimes your email software performs compression automatically.

Everyone hates large file attachments because they take so long to send and receive - and some email systems even block attachments over a certain size. Still others do not allow multiple attachments to be sent with a single email message. So file compression has two benefits: it makes files smaller (and therefore faster) and it can merge multiple files into a single file.

When using compression, stick with a standard such as WinZip for Windows, StuffIt for Macintosh or Gzip for Unix.

3) Encoding
Encoding is the work done by your email software before it sends your attachment on its way. If you and your recipient are on different email systems (BTInternet and TescoNet, for instance) or using different software, your software may encode the attachments differently, making it difficult (but not impossible) to view them. Common encoding methods are MIME (multipurpose Internet mail extensions), BinHex and uuencode. Some email software may let you pick your encoding methods, but others do not.

Of those three, MIME is the most popular. And if you are sending from one Internet account to another (and not to one of the proprietary services such as AOL or CompuServe), you probably don't have to worry about negotiating between encoding methods.



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Created: 19/02/2004  Updated: 19/02/2004
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