Attachments are the pariahs of mailbox and business storage space. They can also be the source of accidentally leaking confidential data and opening the door to viruses. Not surprisingly, attachments carry their own health warnings.

Part 4 provides ways to save time by smartly managing your use of attachments, both as sender and as recipient.

Five steps to improving my productivity – managing attachments

How many times have you received that annoying and at times distressing message saying ‘You are now over your mailbox limit’? If you are too far over, you may not be able to send or receive any more emails. This means that you have to stop and immediately take steps to reduce your mailbox: depending on your system, you may find yourself locked out of your mailbox for a few hours.

Have you ever inadvertently sent a file which reveals all the internal comments on a document? This might be highly sensitive data which should never have been seen by anyone outside the business. In 2006 Google accidentally revealed confidential financial data because comments (written as reminders to the presenter) were left in a slide presentation when it was later distributed. The revelation caused the shares to slip by 2 per cent.

Do you ever send emails with attachments only to find that the recipient has not received them because they are too large? This can entail losing valuable time as you try to sort out the matter, perhaps by shrinking the size of the attachment.

The blunt way that has been developed to manage the burden imposed by the growing volume and size of attachments is through the imposition of mailbox limits and restrictions on attachment sizes and content. They are not unlike highway speed cameras – they act as a powerful deterrent and ignoring them can be very costly. However, they do not really address the fundamental underlying problem of poor email management.

Taking personal control of how you handle attachments is a far more effective way to save time and increase your productivity rather than relying on the limits of the system.