by Technophobes;the Kicking;Screaming Is This Thing On?: A Computer Handbook for Late Bloomers
• Once the text is highlighted, click on Edit in the Menu Bar.
• Click on Copy. (Most e-mail will not allow you to cut.)
• Click on either Write or Compose or New to open a new e-mail.
• Click inside the text area of the new e-mail where you normally type your message. A blinking line should appear.
• Click on Edit in the Menu Bar.
• Click on Paste.
Finito! The text is now in a new e-mail with no trace of its past journeys. Well done.
CLICK AND GO
1. Click in text message area.
2. Click Edit.
3. Click Paste.
• You have a choice of using the TO:, CC:, or BCC: boxes for your e-mail recipients.
Let’s send this e-mail to a group without exposing the recipients to each other’s e-mail addresses. Each e-mail service works slightly differently, so you may have to find where you activate BCC: instead of TO: when addressing an e-mail. You might have to click on Add BCC: to reveal the BCC: address area. If you select recipients from your e-mail address book, you may choose the BCC: option at that time. Some e-mail services require there be at least one address in the TO: box. Why not type your e-mail address in the TO: box and then delete the e-mail when you receive it? That’s also a good way to know if the e-mail went out and you won’t have exposed any of your recipients’ e-mail addresses to each other.
Be sure to type in a Subject so the recipients know what the e-mail is about. Off it goes!
TAKE YOUR TIME
When you rent a car, the car initially appears unfamiliar and perhaps even a little intimidating. After you relax a bit you begin to identify the location of the blinker, the emergency brake, and so on. The rental car isn’t really very different than the one in the garage at home. At some point, your e-mail service will update or redesign their website. This should not be a crippling event. Don’t let it throw you off. Instead, take your time to get to know the “new look.”
Web Links in an E-mail
When I’m planning a trip with my mother I’ll often do online research about our destination before we depart. If I come across a website that Mom will find useful, I’ll send her the website address embedded in an e-mail. Because website addresses can get very long and gibberishy, I certainly don’t want to have to trust myself to retype it all. Instead I can copy and paste it into the e-mail.
CLICK AND GO
1. Click on website address box to highlight.
2. Click Edit.
3. Click Copy.
4. Minimize the window or click the tab for your e-mail.
5. Click on e-mail window.
6. Click in text area.
7. Click on Edit.
8. Click on Paste.
WHY DO WEBSITE ADDRESSES APPEAR AS GIBBERISH?
Once you have typed in a website address you may notice that with each page of the site that you look at, the address gets longer and more confusing. That’s because it is actually all coding that identifies the website and the specific page you’re on. You don’t have to type or remember the long addresses, just the basic web address you used to access the site.
Try it yourself. Before going through the specific steps to embed the web link (copy and paste a web address into an e-mail), open up your e-mail account and have a blank e-mail waiting for the link. Shrink your e-mail account by clicking on the Minimize Box or Collapse Box. Now, open another Internet window and go to the web page that you would like to share. I’m going to send my mother the Amtrak train schedule from New York to Boston.
• Highlight the web address by clicking once on the web address at the top of the window. (If you have a Mac, you’ll have to click in the far left corner of the web address box on the icon.)
• Click on Edit.
• Click on Copy.
• Minimize the browser window and open the e-mail window that is waiting in the Task Bar or click on your e-mail tab.
• Click in the message text area.
• Click on Edit.
• Click on Paste.
Voilà! Now you can finish the e-mail, type in a subject, put in the recipient’s e-mail address, and off it goes!
• If the mouse arrow becomes a hand, it is an indication that the embedded web link can be accessed with a click of the mouse.
When you receive an e-mail with a link it in, you usually should be able to simply click on the link to go to the intended website. If for some reason the link is not active or working, you can copy and paste it into the website address box at the top of the window and then visit the suggested site. Receiving an e-vite or e-card is a common way to receive a link embedded in an e-mail. An e-vite is an invitation via e-mail, and an e-card is a greeting card sent via e-mail. Visit evite.com to access free e-vite invitations and 123greetings.com to access free greetings cards.
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“I was totally intimidated by attachments until I finally opened one. I felt foolish being so timid when it wasn’t a big deal at all.”
—Nicholas
* * *
Get Attached
An attachment is anything you send along with an e-mail. It could be a document (e.g., a poem you wrote, driving directions, your résumé, your favorite recipe, etc.), a photograph, or even a movie or song. Let’s go with the résumé scenario… In the days before computers, you’d type your résumé (then probably make photocopies of it or have a printing company produce copies for you). Next, you’d compose a cover letter either by hand or on a typewriter. Then, you would paper-clip a copy of your résumé to the cover letter. Your résumé would now be attached to the cover letter and would become an attachment.
In theory, it’s no different with e-mail. Instead of typing your résumé on a typewriter, you type it on the computer, where it’s stored to print at will or, in this case, attach to an e-mail. Next, you access your e-mail account and compose the e-mail that will accompany your résumé. Lastly, you instruct the computer to fetch the stored résumé and attach it to the e-mail. All you do then is click Send and off it goes! No trip to the post office, no waiting in line, and your dispatch arrives at its destination within minutes. Don’t worry, we’ll go through the process step by step together. But before we send an attachment, let’s discuss receiving one.
Receiving an Attachment
Check out the sample e-mail shown here. Your e-mail service may look different, but all e-mail services offer the same components. Relax, take your time, and figure out how this illustration relates to your e-mail service.
Your e-mail service uses a symbol to indicate that an e-mail contains an attachment. Nearly all services use a paper clip as seen here. AOL employs . Make yourself take notice of whether an e-mail has an attachment or not.
• An e-mail with an attachment in Yahoo Mail. The paper clip indicates there is an attachment.
To view an attachment, you must first open the e-mail it was sent with. Then you open or download the attachment. Before going forward with opening the e-mail, ask yourself, “Do I know the sender?” E-mail attachments are one of the ways to unleash a virus onto your computer. If I receive an e-mail with an attachment and I don’t recognize the sender, I’ll delete the e-mail without opening it to protect my computer from a possible virus. (I routinely delete unopened e-mails from unknown senders to lessen the spam on my computer as well.)
Here are instructions for you to follow to download an attachment received in Yahoo! Feel free to read through them now, but don’t expect the information to make sense until you’re in front of the computer with an actual attachment.
• Open the e-mail as you usually do.
• Move the mouse arrow onto the name of the attachment or the paperclip. Don’t be surprised if the mouse arrow now appears as a hand. (Remember, the hand is a positive indication that if you click there something will open for you.)
REMAIN FLEXIBLE
If your e-mail service is not Yahoo! things may appear slightly different on your screen
. Be flexible. All e-mail attachments are opened with the same general steps. Take your time to check out what your e-mail service offers. See how it works in relationship to the Yahoo example.
• An attachment in Yahoo! mail.
• In the case of Yahoo!, either click on the name of the attachment or the words Save To Computer to the right of the attachment. With your e-mail service, you may instead click on Download, Download Now, or Open. (If a single-click doesn’t do the trick, try a double-click.)
• Yahoo! automatically scans attachments for viruses (a real plus) and lets you know if they find anything suspicious. If no viruses are found, next click on Download Attachment. You may need to use the Scroll Bar to move down the page to expose Download Attachment.
• You have the choice to either open the attachment or save it. If it’s an attachment you want to view once and discard, then click Open. If it’s an attachment you want to keep, at least for a while, then click Save. For the sake of an exercise, I’ll show you what to do to save the attachment. Click on Save.
• A window opens for you to decide where you want to save the attachment. (This is an important step because if you don’t take command of where you put the attachment, you’ll have trouble finding it later.) Click on the down arrow to the right of the location listed in the window. A drop-down menu appears; click Desktop. This instructs the computer to download the attachment to your Desktop—an easy place to find it later, but not where you’d want it to live permanently. Eventually you’ll want to organize the documents on your Desktop into a filing system. We’ll get to that in Chapter 20. Notice the name of the attachment, so you can identify it later. You can also change the name at this point to whatever you’ll remember.
CLICK AND GO
1. Click on down arrow.
2. Click on Desktop.
3. Note the name of the attachment.
4. Click Save.
• Now click on Save and wait. Depending on the size of the attachment (photos are slower to download than most documents because they take up more space) and what type of connection you have (a dial-up is slower than high speed), this could take as long as a minute or two. (Unfortunately, some files can be too big for a dial-up to handle and may not download at all, yet another reason for you to consider a high-speed Internet connection.)
• The attachment may have opened on the screen for you to view. If it didn’t, you can shrink your e-mail window. Remember the Minimize Box ( for PC or for Mac). Click to minimize the window.
• The attachment will now be one of the icons on the Desktop.
• Double-click on it to open. If necessary, maximize the attachment ( for PC or for Mac).
Fun, isn’t it? When you decide you no longer want the item on your computer, you can click and drag it into the Recycle Bin or the Trash.
REMEMBER TO SCROLL
If there is a Scroll Bar, use it. Otherwise you may miss out on something the page has to offer.
Why Won’t My Download Open?
To download or upload simply means to move something from one place to another. Here’s an example of downloading: The weather warms up and I download my summer clothes from the top of my closet to my dresser. An attachment gets downloaded to your computer from the e-mail it was attached to. When you send an attachment, you upload it from your computer to an e-mail and send it.
Sometimes, however, when people try to download an attachment, they don’t succeed and they blame themselves or their computer. There are several possible reasons for this failure to download, but the most likely is that the format of the attachment isn’t compatible with the computer attempting the download. This is neither the user’s fault nor the computer’s. Let me explain: The word “file,” in computer-speak, refers to written documents, photographs, music clips, or movies. Anything that contains data is called a file (not to be confused with file folders, which contain multiple files). Every file, regardless of whether it is text or image or sound, is created using a particular software program. The same software program that was used to create the file is usually necessary at the other end to view the attachment when received. For example, if someone sends you a document written using Microsoft Word, you need Microsoft Word on your computer to view that document. Think of it this way: Computer software programs are a language. Your computer needs to speak the same language as the attachment in order to read the attachment.
Hang in there while I show you the most common formats for an attachment. In Chapter 15 (on page 201) we talked about naming a document. You choose the name of a document or a photo (both known as a file) on your computer. Each file also has a suffix, or extension, that you don’t choose, which identifies the format (designated software program) of that file. As an example, a Microsoft Word document ends in .doc. Remember the document we created and named “smile” in Chapter 15? In fact, “smile.doc” is its full name.
Here’s a list of the most common suffixes you may encounter:
.doc or .docx = Microsoft Word document
.xls or .xlsx = Microsoft Excel spreadsheet
.pdf = Adobe Acrobat portable document file
.ppt = Microsoft Power Point Presentation
.cwk = Apple Works document
.mov = QuickTime movie
.wav = sound file
.jpg = a graphic or image
.zip = compressed data
If you receive and download an attachment and the name of the attachment ends in .doc, the Microsoft Word software program must be installed on your computer to view the attachment. A pattern will begin to emerge for you of attachment file types you can and cannot open. If you receive an e-mail attachment but it won’t open, you have the option to e-mail the sender, let them know what attachments you have successfully opened (e.g., “I can open Word, which ends in doc, and Excel, which ends in xls, and photographs if they end in jpg.”), and place the burden on them to convert the attachment to a format your computer can read.
STAY CALM
If what appears on these pages is different than what you see on your screen, calmly look at the window on your screen to see what allows you to attach a photo, document, and so on. I bet that you can find what you need.
Sending an Attachment
Now let’s upload an attachment to an e-mail to send. The same instructions apply whether you’re sending a document or a photo. Before we can begin the process of uploading, decide what you want to attach. Do you know where it lives on your computer? (i.e., Desktop, Documents, etc.). Do you know the name of it? During the upload process, you must tell the computer where to find the file to upload, so you need to know where it is and what it’s called. The process doesn’t start with opening or viewing the item you want to attach. It starts with your e-mail. This time let’s use Gmail as an example for sending an attachment.
• Open your e-mail account and click on Write, New, Compose, or Create to generate an e-mail. It’s easy to put in the recipient’s e-mail address, compose the e-mail, and forget to actually attach the file. To circumvent forgetting, we’ll attach first and write later.
• Click on either the paper clip , Attach Files, or Attach. The more comfortable you become with the computer, the more you’ll be able to look around a window and instinctively find what you seek. Remember you may need to use the Scroll Bar to reveal what you need. Take your time, remain calm, and be patient with yourself and the computer.
• Each e-mail service is slightly different regarding what you click on to attach a file.
CLICK AND GO
1. Click on Attach a File.
2. Click on desired item to attach.
3. Click Open.
4. Fill in the address, subject, e-mail message.
5. Click Send.
• With most e-mail services, you click on Find, Browse, or Choose File to direct the computer to the item to be attached.
• A window appears (similar to the window when you downloaded). Again, you’ll click on the arrow to navigate to where the attac
hment lives. Once you find the item to be attached, either click on the name of it, then click on Open or Attach, or you can double-click on the name.
• The attachment name will appear either near the subject area of the e-mail or you may need to scroll down to see it at the bottom of the e-mail. You have attached a file to an e-mail! Congratulations!
• Now fill in the recipient’s e-mail address, subject, and type a note. Be sure to mention the existence of an attachment in the subject or the message. Cautious e-mailers won’t open attachments unless they know the sender consciously sent it, just in case it’s a virus that attached itself without the knowledge of the sender.
How are you doing? Are attachments, both sent and received, making sense? I hope so.
Up until now, we’ve been dealing with a file (document) that already exists on your computer. Hmmm… how do you get a document or a photo onto your computer if you don’t receive it as an attachment and it’s not a document you wrote and saved yourself? We’ll discuss using a digital camera and a scanner to get images onto your computer in the next chapter.
Time for a Little Reflection
Wow! You’ve come a long way. It seems like only yesterday that you and your computer met for the first time. Now here you are uploading and downloading. Please return to this chapter as often as you need when you’ve received an attachment or have a masterpiece of your own to send, and you want a little support. Don’t forget to visit abbyandme.com for additional advice on e-mail and attachments. It would be my pleasure to be of assistance.
