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If you're an email fan, you certainly appreciate the attachment feature available in most email programs.
Since you can "attach" almost anything: images, sound, text.
People are sending just anything by email...

One time I got a message with a HUGE picture, it took more than 20 min to download, I had to cancel many times because my mail program was stuck. I was very angry because that person kept doing it over and over...

There's always a better way for doing things, so here's how to send an attachment by email.

Most likely you'll be sending family photos (images), your favorite song (sound), a report (word documents, text files), a post card or an exciting program (EXE files).


IMAGE

Never send images in their native format, for example if you created an image using CorelDraw or Illustrator, You should never send this image by email: The other party might not have the program to view the image.
Although many programs allow you to import other formats, don't take the risk.

The best way is to convert your images into GIF or JPG.
Use GIF when you are dealing with illustration (something drawn) or images with few colors.
Use JPG with photos, images with lots of colors (e.g family photo).
Never save a complex image(lots of colors) as BMP, your file will simply increase in size.
Use the compression feature in JPG to minimize your file size.
Sometimes a 1MB image can drop to 10K.
This can be quite useful, first you will send your email message in a glance, second the other party will get before you know it and you'll never get into trouble !



SOUND

WAV is an universal format for sound, it is commonly used by everyone, the problem with WAV is the file size: a 10 sec recorded file can have a size of 0.5MB.
One solution is to compact your file using a compression utility like winzip, pkware...
You can also use another format like PureVoice extension that comes shipped with Eudora, but you have to make sure that the recipient has PureVoice in the first place.
If you still want to stick with wav (supported by all Windows Computers), you have to change the audio format. The file size can drop by 50% and still retain quality.
Experiment with audio formats to see which is more suitable for the task.
"PCM 8,000 Hz 8 Bit Mono" can give you fair results.

To see if this really works, I converted "the Microsoft Sound" file 693K (win98) to PCM,8,000 Hz, 8 Bit, Mono.
When played the sound seemed almost the same (although some flaws were noticed). Surprisingly the size dropped to 63K, a decrease of 91%, then I used Pkware to compress the file and created two versions .zip and .EXE (EXE extracts on any computer even if PKware is not installed),
I got the following

zip 42.6k
exe 58.5k

The sound-file is now ready to be sent.
Finally, It's better to apply both, use the WAV compression (changing audio format) and file compression (zipping the file).



TEXT and WORD

If your text files (.txt,.rtf) or Word Documents (.doc) are too large
try to compress them, your can sometimes reduce the file by 90%.
Remember to select the Self-Extract option to decompress the file without the compression utility.

If you're not using the features inside Microsoft Word e.g WordArt,
you'd better use your email program to compose.
Almost all new email programs e.g Netscape Messenger, Outlook Express support formatting with Rich Text(html) format, you can use Bold, Underline, Italic and even colors in your text. You can include some picture, links and tables in your email.



EXE

It's very dangerous to send an EXE file by email especially when you don't know the source of the original copy.
The file might contain instructions for a virus, your friend will trust you and he'll open the file, next day his hard drive is wiped up, and you know the rest...
If you still want to send EXE by email, check the file for viruses.
It's better not to send the file by email, you can upload it to an anonymous ftp site and include only a link in the email message.

To search for an anonymous ftp server go to altavista.com and type "upload a file to an anonymous FTP server" or use the service offered
by WebWonderland http://www.webwonderland.com/links/upload.html

Finally, don't send rubbish in your email.
Email is great because it's fast, don't ruin it
Now you can send attachment with your Free email, some sites put restrictions on attachment size, you can overcome this problem by controlling what you're sending.