How to Send an Email Attachment
Written by Gayle L. Fornataro, Virtual Valley Student Success Coordinator

Note: The following lesson provides illustrations of how to send an email attachment using Microsoft Outlook Web Access on a PC with Microsoft Vista. The process is similar for other email programs, other operating systems, and for sending attachments on a Mac.

Attaching Photos or Documents to an Email

Note: You may sometimes see the "attachments" button as a paperclip.

Note: The person you are sending your attachment to may not have the same word processing program as you do, and, therefore, may not be able to open your attachment unless you first save it in a universal format. This is especially true if you use Microsoft Works, rather than Microsoft Word. "Works" is the basic word processing programs that comes free with most PC's. It is generally a good idea to replace it with the more powerful program, Word. Until then, however, you can save your file in "Rich Text Format" or as a Microsoft Word file with the Works "Save As" menu. Additionally, if you have the newest version of Microsoft Word (2007), then you also may have to save your file as a "Word 97-2003" or as "Rich text format" because while the newest Word can open files from earlier versions, the reverse is not true: older versions of the program cannot open files created with the newest version.

Common File Formats
File Extension	File Type	Who Can Open and Read it?
.doc	Miscrosoft Word 97-2003	Those who have any version of MS Word
.docx	Microsoft Word 2007	Only those with the most recent version of MS Word
.rtf	Rich Text Format	Everyone - no matter what word processing program they have.