How to Attach Documents to E-mails
Important Note: It is necessary for you to know where you saved the document you want to send.
Let’s say you have typed a study guide and you want to send it to Mrs. English. For the sake of this explanation, let’s call this document Iliad Study Guide. The best way to send Iliad Study Guide to Mrs. English is by attaching it to an e-mail. (Think of it like paper-clipping the document onto your e-mail).
By attaching Iliad Study Guide to the e-mail, instead of putting the contents of Iliad Study Guide right into the body of the e-mail, the original format of Iliad Study Guide can be preserved. Here’s how to do it…
Step-by-Step Attaching Instructions:
1. Log in to your e-mail as you normally do.
2. Click the “New E-mail” button (or whatever button you usually click to type new e-mails)
3. Now look for a button somewhere on the page that says one of these things (or something very close to one of these things): Attach....Add File…Attach File…(in Outlook you might just see a little picture of a paper clip).
4. Once you’ve found a button that says something like “attach”, click it.
5. Now a File Browser will pop up on the screen. The file browser may look complicated, but don’t worry—if you know where your Iliad Study Guide is saved, it will be simple to find it with the File Browser.
6. Let’s say you’ve saved the document Iliad Study Guide in a folder called Classical Literature Homework. And let’s say that this folder is located in the My Documents Folder. The My Documents folder should be easy to find. There are a few different ways to find it, depending on your computer, so I’ll just explain one of the simplest ways: Look up at the top of the File Browser box. You’ll see a horizontal, narrow, white space with a little arrow head on its right side. If the narrow, white box/space says My Documents, then you can skip step 7. If it doesn’t say My Documents, then continue on to step 7.
7. The title in the thin white space is telling you what folder you are currently in. Let’s say the white space says something besides My Documents (it could say any number of things). To get into the My Documents folder, click the little black arrow head on the right side of the white box/space. This will make a drop down menu appear.
8. This drop down menu will have a list of folders. Depending on your computer, the list could be long or short. Look for the folder called My Documents and click it.
9. Now the white space should say My Documents in it. This means that you are in the My Documents folder. Because you created a folder called Classical Literature Homework within the My Documents folder, you should now see this folder in the File Browser. It will look like a little yellow folder with the title Classical Literature Homework.
10. To get into the Classical Literature Homework file, you will want to double click on its yellow folder.
11. Now the little white space at the top of the File Browser should say Classical Literature Homework. Once again, this is simply telling you what folder you are in (in this case, the Classical Literature Homework folder).
12. You should now be able to see your document called Iliad Study Guide in the File Browser.
13. Iliad Study Guide is the file that you want to send to Mrs. English, so double click on it.
14. The File Browser should disappear, and you should be looking once again at your e-mail.
15. The file Iliad Study Guide is now attached to your e-mail!
16. All you have to do now is hit “send”!