What is an Email Attachment?
| Electronic Mail Attachments |
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A file sent by email is "attached" to the email. An attachment can be a picture, a word processor document, a program or any other type of file. You should never open an attachment if you are not sure what it is, because some viruses propagate as email attachments; but they can't infect your machine if you don't open the attachment! The origin of email, or electronic mail, was to send text-only messages across an electronic medium. Of course, as the Internet and email programs became more sophisticated, the demands and expectations of users became higher. Users not only wanted to send text in a message, they also wanted to include sound files, scanned photos, spreadsheet or database documents, and rich text format documents. Rich text format documents are those that contain fancy fonts, enhancements such as bolded or underlined text, tables, graphics, etc. So, how do we send these non-text documents through a system that is meant to handle only text-based documents? The answer is the file attachment. A file attachment is defined as "a file that is 'attached' and sent as part of a standard text email message". In essence, it tags along with the text message when the message is sent to the recipient. When the recipient receives the message, a message included with the original message file attachment enclosed. The recipient can then open the attachment or save it to their computer. |
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