File Attachments 101

As digital cameras become staples to daily life, so does the want to send the pictures you take to friends and family. With only a few clicks, you can send any file you want to an email address, whether it be a word-processed document, picture, Excel spreadsheet, sound clip – anything!

Prerequisite:
The one prerequisite for attaching a file is to know where the file physically resides on your computer. A file is the word for any item on your computer that I listed in the first paragraph, any piece of data, ie. a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, sound file, picture…etc. To learn how to save downloaded files onto your computer so that you can find them easier later (and also to learn how to create a special folder for storing your files on your computer), be sure to read File Downloading 101.

Moving right along, we are now ready to attach the file to an email to send to a friend. Open up the program you use to check email, and begin creating a new email.

To attach the file, you need to look at the toolbar for an icon that contains a picture of a paper clip:

Clicking this icon will bring up a dialog box similar to the one used to download a file. The email program is asking you to find the file you wish to attach. This is where you need to remember where you saved it the first time, as discussed in the File Downloading 101 article.

Once you find the folder you created in the dialog box, double click on it to select it. This will allow you to see all the individual files you have in that particular folder. Once you’ve found the file you wish to send, click on to select it, and then click the “OK” button in the dialog box (in some email programs, it might say “attach” or “open”).

That’s all, folks! Your email program can take it from here. It knows where to put the file in the email so that it can be sent. So run, frolic – send those pictures! Everyone’s waiting to see the pictures of the new baby… and your boss is waiting for the spreadsheet of last month’s figures…