More on Email Attachments

I observed a user the other day that made me realize that some people really don't know how to handle email attachments. This user had received a copy of a form letter created as a Word document. They used this form to send letters to their Clients.

Each time the user needed to send one of these letters they would open Outlook and search for the email message (another problem in itself), open the document, make changes to the document, and print the document. They indicated to me that they were having trouble saving the documents.

What's wrong here? Well, first obviously the document should not be accessed via Outlook. This process wasted space within Outlook, made the customized letters impossible to find, prohibited others from using the same form document, prevented the documents from being backed up. etc, etc, etc.

What needs to be done? It's simple. Right click on the attachment within the email message. Click on Copy. Open a folder on your server where the form should be properly located. Right click in that folder and click Paste. A copy of the document will now be in the folder. I would also suggest you go back into the Outlook message, right click on the attachment and select Remove. (Or delete the message itself) This will remove the attachment from the message therefore saving space in your email data location.

With the file properly located in your server file system, it can be shared and backed up. Also saving and finding those individualized letters will be much easier.