Weekly Computer Tip # 95
1 January 2005

Send the current document, presentation or workbook as an email attachment (Microsoft Office)

First of all: Happy New Year! I hope you had a great Christmas and are looking forward to new challenges in 2005. Any New Year resolutions? (Why not make it your New Year resolution to invest a little in yourself and get trained?!)

This first tip of 2005 is inspired by some recent coaching sessions I did with a prof, about to go on sabbatical. He suddenly realised he soon would be unable to rely on his secretary to help him. Time to find out exactly how he was using his computer on a daily basis and see whether he could become more effective. As it turned out a lot of his work involved receiving and sending academic papers for review. He would open the attachment, proofread the Word document (which he now combines with tracking changes ;-), save it, and then attach it to the email from within Outlook. (What is sometimes referred to as the "pull" option.) Nothing wrong with that, but did you know you can send that open document as an email attachment without having to close it down and opening up Outlook? (The "push" option.)

Here's how:

1. Open or create the document that you want to e-mail as an attachment.
2. On the File menu, point to Send To, and then click Mail Recipient (as Attachment). This will automatically open up Outlook and display the mail message with the file attachment; by default, the document's name appears in the Subject box. If you want, you can type your own subject name.
3. In the To and Cc boxes, enter recipient names.
4. Enter the text of your message and send it as normal.

By the way, following the coaching session the prof emailed that the departmental secretaries ("Pam et al" as he put it ;-) "were all very impressed with the 'Push'/Pull' options of sending email attachments!" So if you're not already using it ... you're not on your own! Try it out and let me know what you think.

Finally, I have some spaces left on the "Become the 2005 Office Wiz - Computer Coaching Programme" so first come, first served!

Until next week.

PS I’m committed to sharing the best of what I know with others so please don’t keep me a secret. If you enjoyed today’s tip, please forward it to anyone you feel may benefit. Alternatively, feel free to reprint it (with full copyright and subscription information) in your newsletters and message boards.

Home   Training   Support   Clients   Contact Details   News   Disclaimer