In this chapter, you learn how to create, manage, detach, and launch file attachments.
There might be times when you want to send a file to someone through email. That file might be a Domino database, a spreadsheet, a word processing document, a compressed file, a graphics file, or a scanned photograph of your grandchildren—almost any type of file. In Lotus Notes, you can attach an entire file within the body of your mail message and send it. The file you attach is a copy, so your original remains intact on your computer.
The user who receives your mail can detach your file and save it. If the recipient has the same application program in which the file was created, she can launch the application, opening the file in its native application.
Note
Be careful about opening an attachment. It could be a virus! If you have virus protection software running on your email, you should be notified if the attachment is a potential virus. But if you don’t have virus software, you should not open any attachment unless you are expecting the file or know the person sending you the file.
Attachments can be placed only in rich text fields, and the body of the mail message (where you type your message) is the only rich text field in the Mail Message form.
Note
Although you tend to use attachments most often when working with your mail database, you can attach a file to any database document that has a rich text, or body, field. For example, in a personnel database there might be an attachment in a person’s document that is a scanned picture—the person’s portrait.
To attach a file to a Lotus Notes mail message, do the following:
Create the mail message. Make sure your insertion point (cursor) is in the message body at the exact point at which you want the attachment to appear.
Choose File, Attach or click the Attach icon on the toolbar. The Create Attachments dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 15.1.
In the Create Attachments dialog box, select the location of the file from the Look In drop-down field and navigate to the location of the file in your file system.
The Compress box is enabled by default. Leave this box checked.
Note
Compressed files use less space on a disk and take less time to transfer from one place to another than uncompressed files. But don’t have Notes compress a file that you intend to send to a non-Notes user; the mail router will just have to decompress the file again before transferring it because Notes uses proprietary compression techniques and other mail programs probably won’t be able to decompress the file. If you want to compress a file for sending to a non-Notes mail recipient, use a compression program such as WinZip.
Click the Create button. The attached file appears as an icon within the body of your mail message (see Figure 15.2).
Figure 15.1. The Create Attachment(s) dialog box allows you to search for the file or files you wish to attach.
Figure 15.2. The attachment icon in this mail memo shows that the file is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
The appearance of the icon depends on the type of file it represents and whether you have the original software that this file was created in installed on your PC. If you are attaching an Adobe Acrobat PDF file, you see an Adobe Acrobat icon in your mail message. If the file is a Microsoft Word file, you see a Microsoft Word icon in your mail message. If you don’t have native software installed for that file, you see a generic document icon.
When you receive mail that has an attachment, a paper clip icon appears next to the mail message in your Inbox (see Figure 15.3).
Note
You can add attachments to Notes documents by dragging and dropping them from your file system. To do this, resize your Lotus Notes program window and open and resize your My Documents folder (or the Windows Explorer window that displays the file you want to drag). Place the windows side-by-side and drag the file from My Documents to a rich text field in your Lotus Notes document or mail memo.
When you receive an attached file, you can view, open, edit, save, or delete the file. Viewing a file means that you can see the file contents, even if you don’t have the application in which the file was created. To view a file, open the mail message, double-click the attachment icon, and click the View button in the Properties box (see Figure 15.4). You might not be able to see the file exactly as it was originally formatted because the Notes Viewer doesn’t read all formatting from all software programs, but the Viewer provides a menu that lets you see the file in different ways depending on the type of file. For example, you can display a spreadsheet file with or without gridlines. After you finish looking at the file, press Esc to leave the view.
To delete the attached file, do the following:
Double-click the attached file icon.
This removes the file from your email but first gives you a warning, as shown in Figure 15.5.
Click Yes to proceed and delete the attachment. A notation appears in the memo stating the attachment file name and who deleted it.
Figure 15.5. The Delete Attachment dialog box warns you that deleting a file cannot be undone. Deleting a file from an email does not save the file to your hard drive. Instead, it deletes the file completely.
Note
There are three possible reasons for failing to view or open an attachment. First, the Attachment Viewer must be installed on your PC in order to view the attachment. If it is not, consult with your Notes administrator. Second, the file you are trying to view must be one supported by Lotus Notes. Many types of files are supported by Lotus Notes; for a complete list, consult the Help database and from the Index view, do a quick search for attachments. Then click supported file formats, select Opening, saving or deleting attachments and click on To view file attachments. Lastly, if you’re trying to launch the attachment, you must have access to the application that can display the file format.
Note
When you reply with history to a mail message that has an attached file, or forward the message, you might not want to send the attachment on to the next recipient. You don’t have to delete it from the reply; Notes will do that for you if you choose Reply without Attachment(s) or Forward without Attachment(s).
When you want to save a copy of the attached file to your own file system, you click Save on the Attachment properties box. The Save Attachment dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 15.6. Specify the drive and directory, or folder, in which you want to save the file. You can also rename the file in this dialog box by typing a new name in the File name field. Be sure to keep the same file extension when you rename a file. Click OK.
Figure 15.6. The Save Attachment dialog box. When you choose Save All, the title of this dialog box says “Save Attachments To:” and it will save all the attachments in your email to the folder you indicate.
Note
When you right-click an attachment you can see options for the attachment not shown in the Attachment dialog box, such as Save and Delete which saves the attachments and also deletes them from your email, saving valuable disk space, and Save All which allows you to save all attachments at once. Try right-clicking an attachment to explore the options.
You can watch the progress of the save on the Status bar. After the save is finished, a message appears on the Status bar telling you that the save is completed and in what drive and folder the file is saved.
To save, delete, or save and delete more than one attachment, right-click one of the attachments and choose Save All, Save and Delete All, or Delete All from the pop-up menu.
If you want to look at an attached file in the application in which it was created, opening the file launches the application from within Notes mail. To open an attachment, double-click the attachment icon and then click the Open button on the Properties box. You can then view the document and make changes. You can save it or print it from the application. You can close the application when you finish with the file. Lotus Notes and your mail message remain open the entire time you are working in the other application.
If you can’t launch the attachment, you probably don’t have that application installed on your computer. You can still use the View option, as described in the beginning of this chapter, to view the formatted contents of the attachment.
Editing an attachment allows you to open the attachment in its originating software, and when you save your changes, Notes automatically saves your changes in the attachment. You simply choose Edit in the attachment properties box, edit the document in Word, or whichever application the file was created in, click Save, and close Word, and you are automatically returned to the email in Lotus Notes. Press the Esc key and Notes will ask you if you want to save your changes. Click Save. Now you can reply with attachments to that email, and your edited attachment will be returned to the recipient.
If you edit documents and return the edited copy to the sender, it’s a good idea to save the document with a different file name. For example, if you receive PressRelease1.doc for your review and you open and edit the document, save it as PressRelease1R.doc so everyone knows that the document has been edited and is different than the document you originally received.
If you decide to make changes to a file you launched and you want to save two versions, the one you received and the one you made changes to, use the Save As command to give it a name you will remember. At the same time, specify a location on your computer where you want to store the file. Saving changes this way does not affect the original attachment sent to you.
The easiest way to print an attachment is to open it in its originating software. If, however, you don’t have the originating software installed, complete the following steps:
Double-click the attachment icon to open the File Properties box.
Choose File, Print. The File Print dialog box appears. The default setting in the File Print dialog box is to print all of the document. If you want to print only a portion of the attachment, highlight that segment before you choose File, Print. Then, after you open the File Print dialog box, choose Selection under Print Range. For more information on printing, see Chapter 4, “Managing Mail.”
Click OK to print the document.
Unexpected results, such as code lines or unusual characters, might occur when you print from the viewer. Whenever possible, therefore, it is better to print from the native application.
Note
Although sending attachments seems faster and easier than embedding files, Notes does have the capability to embed files. By embedding instead of attaching files, recipients do not need additional software to read the contents of your file. We suggest you learn more about embedding files in the Notes Help Database to see if embedding is a better option for you.
In this chapter, you learned how to create, launch, edit, detach, and print attachments. In the next chapter, you learn how to access your mail from the Web when you don’t have Notes available.