How to put attachments into your email *OR* Apparently I'm not the dumbest guy in town when it comes to things digital. Who knew?

From time to time I get emails saying "Check this out! AWESOME!!!" But, of course, there's nothing attached, and nothing in the body of the email. When I asked cher cousin Buzz to send the AWESOME PIC again, he replied:

How the f**k do you do that???? It is already attached to the email I'm
forwarding. HELP!!!

So I sent this. It's geared to Outlook Express users. You Mac Pod People and AOLers are on your own.

Don't panic. Ease down, Ripley, you're just grinding metal. Here's how you do it.

First, you want to set up a new file in MY DOCUMENTS before you get here
called something like "Internet Bullshit" or "Things I hope Shelia never
finds" or, if you want to make sure everybody sees it, "Secret." Click on
MY DOCUMENTS then File--->New ---> Folder --->then type over "new folder"
with "secret internet downloads" or whatever.

Then go back to the email you received.

When it's an attachment to you, with the paper-clip thingy in the upper
right corner, click on the paperclip and you have an option to "save
attachments". If you click that, it will pop-up with a schematic of your
filemanager, with the default save location somewhere in the bowels of your
windows temporary directory, which is a difficult place in which to find
things. So just click around using the up or back arrow on the dialog box
until you get it all the way up to MY DOCUMENTS, then click back down to the
folder you created, "secret internet downloads". Click OK, then you'll be
sent back to the dialog box and you click SAVE.

Easy so far, right?

Then hit the forward button, put the names of all your ne'er-do-well friends
and cousins in the TO box, and click the attachment paperclip. Find your
way to "secret internet downloads", double click the file, and voila!

Then one more thing: folks are very leery of viruses coming to them in
attachments, so don't send a message without any text in the body. Type
something that will identify yourself, anything, so long as it isn't
something a virus might get a hold of or do automatically. In other words,
don't copy the file name or write "check this out." Something like "we're
diggin' this in KC" would be good.

Etiquette. It's considered rude among the digital peoples to leave the
email addresses of all the people you got it from intact on the forward.
This is because you're sending valid email addresses to God-knows-who and if
it gets forwarded enough, a hacker or spammer will get a hold of them.

So clean 'em up, type something to identify yourself, save it, attach it,
and send it. Tits are optional but always appreciated.

spike