voratta Media Systems

Tutorial Platforms: Mac, iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch

 

Tutorial Time: 10 minutes.

Tutorial Requirements:

• An Apple computer running Mac OS-X with Mail app available, OR:
• An iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch (all models) running iOS version 4.3 or newer.

 

Tutorial Overview:

In this tutorial, we'll look at the best ways to ensure your email attachments get to their intended recipients, on both Mac and iOS devices (meaning, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch.)  

Example: Mac OS-X Mail App

 

Key ideas:

• Attachments can be added to mail messages at any time.
• Attachments will appear in-line as an icon within the message body.
• There are multiple ways to attach files to messages, but two of the most popular methods are:
  • Dragging the file icon from Finder into the message, or by,
  • Clicking the Attach button at the top of the message header.
• This tutorial will cover the latter procedure.
• When the recipient views the message, they'll see the attachment in it's entirety. Depending on the email client they're using (i.e. Mail on another Mac, or Windows Live Mail on a PC, etc.) the attachment might appear in the same place in the document, or sometimes in the menu bar of their software, or occasionally at the end of the email.

 

Sending a PDF as an attachment:

1. Open Mail:
2. Create a new message:
3. Fill in the recipient, message body etc, and when ready, click the Attach button in the message window header:
4. Browse for and select the file you want to attach:
5. When found, click Choose File to insert it as an attachment into the message.
6. When you insert an attachment, it will usually be shown in full preview mode:
7. To turn the attached file (ie. PDF document seen here) into an icon, for easier navigation and viewing the message body, simply right click on the file (or Control + click with a single-button mouse, or two-finger click with the Magic Trackpad) and select "View as Icon":
8. Once the attachment is seen as an icon, you can continue with the email body right after it:

 

Example: iOS Mail App

 

Key ideas:

• On your iOS device, email attachments can only be created from within Apps (but not from within Mail.)
• Some out-of-the-box apps support email attachments, such as Contacts, Photos, Youtube, and so on.
• Countless apps (available on the App Store) offer email attachment support (often found under a button labeled Share .)
• Attachments will appear in-line as an icon within the message body.
• You can always save a Draft of the message, from within the host app, so you can finish writing it later and send it from the Mail app.

Note: This tutorial is demonstrated with iPad, however the tutorial steps are the same on iPhone and iPod Touch, albeit with an interface designed for smaller screens.  

Sending contact information as an attachment:

1. Launch Contacts:
2. Search for and select to the contact you want to send: (Click/tap image above for more detail.)
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the contact information, and tap Share Contact.
4. When you tap Share Contact, a new email message appears, with the contact information already prepared in a .vcard attachment. Simply fill out the recipient details and body of the message, and tap Send:
5. If you'd like to save the message as a Draft, to finish and send later from Mail, tap Cancel, then Save Draft:

 

Conclusion:

You should now be well-versed in creating attachments for your email! If the email recipient repeatedly has trouble finding or opening the attachments you're trying to send, please review the message you're sending, and ensure that you see the attachment icon corresponding to the files you want to send. If the recipient is still having trouble, ask them to check their email client to see if the attachments arrived at all. If you need more help, please contact us for assistance. As always, please post your feedback, questions, suggestions, etc regarding this article in the comments section at the bottom of this blog post. Thanks!