E-mail Attachments

These instructions illustrate the process of sending files as e-mail attachments from a typical webmail account. This is a great way to transfer your files from home to school, or vice-versa. Basically, it's these steps:

  1. Go to your e-mail account. For our example, that means pointing Internet Explorer to mail.yahoo.com and logging in with username and password.

  2. Click "Compose" or "Create" to start a new message. Type your OWN e-mail address in the "TO:" field, and add a Subject:


  3. Click the "Attach Files" link (under the Subject field). You will see the following screen:


  4. Click the "Browse" button next to "File 1." The standard "Open File" window appears. Navigate to the file you want to send, and click "Open."


  5. The resulting screen shows the file name you chose in the "File 1" field. If you have additional files, choose them by repeating steps 3-4 above for "File 2," "File 3," etc.


  6. Now click the "Attach Files" button in the lower part of the window to finally attach the selected files to your message:


  7. The resulting screen shows that your file was attached. Click the "Done" button.


  8. You are taken back to the message composition window. You don't need to type a message, but you can:


  9. Click the "Send" button. If you left the message area empty, you may see a warning screen like the one below, warning you that you are sending an empty message. Since you are sending attached files, that's OK.


  10. Click the "Send" button (if you got the screen above).
    You will see the confirmation screen:


  11. Now, go home (if you're at school), or go to school (if you're at home). Log into your e-mail account, open the message you will have received from yourself, and open the attached file by clicking "Scan and download attachment:"


  12. Yahoo Mail service will now scan your file for viruses. Assuming there are none found, you will see the following screen:


  13. You can now download the attached file. Do this by holding down the Control key on the keyboard and clicking the "Download attachment" link, then selecting "Download Link to Disk" (in Internet Explorer) or "Save this link as" (in Netscape):


  14. The standard "Save File" window appears. Check the name of the file you are saving to be sure it's what you want, and click the "Save" button:


  15. That's it! Now you can open your file by running the program used to create it (e.g., Appleworks, Microsoft Word, Excel), selecting "File > Open" from the program's menu bar, and choosing your file in the "Open File" window.