Love it or hate it, email is an integral part of every minister’s life. Whether it’s communicating with co-workers, writing email newsletters, coordinating with volunteers, or the many other ways we use email these days it’s very likely that you’re emailing people multiple times every day.
Sometimes email will help you be more productive and other times it will kill your productivity. This week we’re kicking off a series of posts on errors people make using email and suggest some ways to fix those errors. If you know someone who makes these errors point them this way! Check back each day for more!
Today we’re going to talk about email attachments and some of the common ways I see people using them in less than ideal ways.
Forgetting to Actually Attach the Attachment
I think EVERYONE falls victim to this one from time to time. You tell the recipients of your email to see the attachment, but you didn’t remember to click a couple buttons to add it to your email. It’s embarrassing to be the one to forget the attachment, but you can easily fix this.
If you use Gmail you have a built-in reminder to make sure you don’t forget an attachment (one of the many great reasons to use Gmail!), but it if you use Outlook it’s a little more complicated. Check out this article from LifeHacker on how to set up a macro to help keep you from forgetting to include that attachment.
Trying to Collaborate on an Attachment
Sometimes there’s a document, PowerPoint Presentation, or spreadsheet that you’re working on with a team. There are some areas that need to be edited by one person and other areas that the whole team needs to look at. Not too long ago this was ridiculously hard to pull off. Some people would edit the original, others would edit a new version, and someone was left to try to pull together all the edits into one document. It easily could take hours and hours to pull off.
That’s not the case any more. There are two free solutions that make it really easy to collaboratively edit. If you use Gmail you already have an account with their Google Docs, so just click the Documents link at the top of your Gmail page. If you’re looking for another solution (maybe you or someone you know is anti-Google) you could check out Zoho. They’ve got a nice selection of free tools.
Pictures: Don’t Attach Them Unless You Have To
It’s great that you’ve got 27 pictures from the youth group mission trip that you’d like to have up on the website, but sending those files to your volunteer who runs the site in an email (or 27) is just not the best way to do it. For one, you’re using up a TON of unnecssary storage space and bandwidth. The newest digital cameras on the market take HUGE pictures that might just end up being too big to attach or receive as attachments depending on the mail service being used.
Instead of doing this, open up a free account with flickr (from Yahoo) or Picasa (another Google product). Either service gives you adequate amounts of storage, allow you to share the pictures with others with just a few clicks, and automatically resize the photos for you to make it easier to use in various ways. Either way is SO MUCH better than attaching photos.
Videos: Um, YouTube?
It doesn’t happen too often anymore, but occasionally I’ll get an email with 45 MB (or larger) video attached to it. I can almost always find the same video on YouTube, but I don’t have to wait for it to fully download before I view it.
Instead of wasting someone else’s email storage and download time you should upload the video to YouTube or Vimeo. They both offer some nice options for sharing or embedding the videos on websites and sharing on facebook/twitter. Don’t attach that video to an email unless you absolutely must.
Closed File Formats (AKA Microsoft Publisher)
It’s great that you’ve spent a ton of time working up a new design for the publication piece, but sending it to me as a Publisher file will do nothing but frustrate me. I don’t have Publisher on my computer and I don’t intend to switch over to Windows just to view it.
Instead of sending that Publisher file (or any other proprietary file for that matter) take an extra 20 seconds to save it as a PDF. This is ridiculously easy to do in Mac (click print then the PDF button on the bottom left of the print dialoge window), but it’s also easy to do in Windows, too. There’s a free app called doPDF that functions as a virtual printer. Once installed you can select doPDF as the printer then save the PDF to wherever you want.
What are some ways that you’ve seen people misuse email attachments? Share your stories in the comments.
