Sending an Attachment  

To send an attachment, you compose a message in the usual manner.  Then look for an attachment button or menu item.  (It will say Attach File or something similar.)  An Open dialog box will appear to let you locate the file to be attached.  (For help with this dialog box, click here.)  

Select the file you want to attach and send the message.  Be sure to tell your recipient what kind of file you're attaching so  that he/she knows how to view it.  For example, if the file was created in Word Perfect, say so.  

Receiving an Attachment  

When you receive a file attached to an e-mail message, your mail reading program will likely show its name to you as an underlined link.  If the file name tells the browser how to view the file (what program to open for viewing it), clicking on the link should launch the correct program and show you the file.    

If the browser doesn't recognize the file type by its name, it will prompt you to save the file to disk.  Do so.  (For help with the SaveAs dialog box, click here.)  Then start the program you need for viewing the file (if you don't know what to use, ask the correspondent who sent it).  Open the file from within the program.    

NOTE: Not all attachments are visible on all computers.  An attached file may have been created with a program not present on or incompatible with your computer.