email attachments

[scole]

ive been e mailling a sketch of a chassis i want made. some poeple are saying the cant open it, pdf, dwg, wmf. whats the best way to send attachmants?

[Don Moose]

A couple of things to look for:

1 - make sure attachments are sent as attachments, not inline with the body
2 - make sure the file size isn't too big for your ISP (so they just stripped it out) or too big for your recipients' systems.
3 - make sure you're really attaching the file, not a shortcut to it.

What email client are you using? I have a strong preference for Tunderbird

Hope this helps!

[JJGross]

I rarely send large images or files through email anymore for the above mentioned reasons, as well as a lot of people who have filters set up to strip junk mail that are too aggressive and strip out everything junk or not.

I use the free YouSendIt.com website instead. It lets you send files up to 100MB via http and sends a link for the recipient to retrieve their file. You can send as many files as you like for free too, just one at a time with a free account. They hold files for 7 days with a limited # of DLs too, something like 10 times on a free account IIRC. They also have commercial accounts with file sizes up to 1GB and unlimited DLs, but I don't send that much so I just use a free account. If I need to send over 100MB at a time, I just compress stuff up and section the zip or rar file.

Cheers,
- JJ

[scole]

i wonder if you could use my space?

[JJGross]

Maybe, I've never tried using it for hosting stuff. Another option might be photobucket.com since images are what you want to host. As far as format, I'd think if you can make PDFs, pretty much anyone with any flavor of browser could at least view them.

[Paleo Pete]

ive been e mailling a sketch of a chassis i want made.

Sketch. That would be a picture...so save it as JPG, picture file, compressed so usually not too big for email.

If you don't use it already, get Thunderbird, the link posted above goes to any language you want, and it's much more secure than Outlook or Outlook Express will ever be, I highly recommend using it and Firefox, Mozilla's browser, to get away from Microsoft's ActiveX, which is installed and enabled in both browser and email client and allows websites/emails to install any software they wish without your knowledge. That's why email viruses exist, ActiveX. Without ActiveX you'd still have to convince someone to open a file on a floppy to get a virus installed on their machine.

I'm a computer technician, by the way, I've been cleaning up messes made by ActiveX for years. Viruses, spyware, trojans, rootkits, backdoors, worms...all are installed by ActiveX when running IE or OE and you never know it until your computer gets bogged down so bad you have to take it to someone like me for repairs.

OK...use Thunderbird, lots safer. Go to the menu bar and look for Insert. Click it and click Image. Browse to the JPG of your chassis and it's visible in your email, and not as an attachment. The email client itself views it, and the recipient can save it to his or her hard drive at will.

More ISPs are starting to delete attachments as a routine preventative measure, because of malicious software that has been sent by attachment for years, I never even open an email with an attachment, send it to me and I'll delete it unopened. Because of the attachment. The only way to get me to open it is to email me in advance and let me know what it is. And even then I open it on a Linux machine as a safety precaution, Linux won't run Windows viruses, spyware etc. If I knew a bit of programming I could safely open up a virus and see what makes it tick on a Linux box.

Get away from Internet Explorer and Outlook/Outlook Express. Both are highly unsecure, if you are currently using either or both you DO have spyware on your machine, probably trojans too. Then get it to a tech who can clean it out. I clean an average of at least a dozen spyware programs off of every machine I work on, and usually at least 2 or 3 trojans. Install and use Firefox and Thunderbird. They're not bulletproof, but they are as close to secure as you'll get these days. I like both well enough I've even installed the Linux versions, even though Linux already has 3-5 browsers and 2 or 3 email clients to choose from installed with the OS.

Send your chassis sketch as a picture, inserted directly into the email, and just about any email client should be able to open and view it without worrying about file type, every email client I know of can view a JPG with no problem. Open the email and the picture is already there, no attachment to open. From what I remember the procedure with OE is very similar, Thunderbird is almost identical to it so users have little trouble switching over and "learning" new software. Not much to learn, it works almost exactly the same. Firefox uses "Bookmarks" instead of IE Favorites, Microsoft would sue them otherwise, that's about the main difference, a couple of things had to be renamed and it doesn't use ActiveX so websites and emails can't install malicious software.

[Steve A.]

I rarely send large images or files through email anymore for the above mentioned reasons, as well as a lot of people who have filters set up to strip junk mail that are too aggressive and strip out everything junk or not.

I use the free YouSendIt.com website instead. It lets you send files up to 100MB via http and sends a link for the recipient to retrieve their file. You can send as many files as you like for free too, just one at a time with a free account. They hold files for 7 days with a limited # of DLs too, something like 10 times on a free account IIRC. They also have commercial accounts with file sizes up to 1GB and unlimited DLs, but I don't send that much so I just use a free account. If I need to send over 100MB at a time, I just compress stuff up and section the zip or rar file.

Cheers,
- JJ

With YouSendIt, there is usually a limit of 100 downloads, and the link expires after 7 days. The interface for the recipient is fairly easy, and you can email the links to yourself (rather than giving out a friend's addy).

I usually use MegUpload which has one of the most frustrating interfaces for the recipient: they need to type in a 3 letter code and then wait 45 seconds for the free download. On the plus side there is no limit to the number of downloads, but the link will expire 30 days (?) after the last time it was accessed. So the links are handy for forums like this. But if I am sending a file to a single recipient, I'll usually use YouSendIt.

Steve Ahola

P.S. As for MySpace I know that you can upload MP3 files that visitors can download- I'm not sure if the artwork you upload is specifically downloadable (other than "Save Picture As..." which will result in a downsampled image).

P.P.S. Some people configure their email to not receive any attachments at all- which is probably the safest way to go. When I send attached files I will just drop and drag them onto the message I am composing. Figure that many mail boxes have a 10MB limit so I always keep the attached files under that size. Good luck!

P.P.P.S. Going back to the original post,I believe that DWG is the AutoCAD format so if they are using a program like that it is probably the best- the least chance of having it resized if you are both using proper clients. PDF is a handy format which can be read by any recipient who has the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program. Maybe it has changed but the PDF files I would create from TurboCAD were often pretty flakey- with fonts all screwed up, etc. Alternately you might convert a graphic to JPG, BMP, TIF or PNG format: with those what you see is pretty much what you get.