To send an attachment, you must be composing a message.

At the bottom of the compose screen, there should be a form field labeled Attach, with a Browse and an Add button next to it.

Click the Browse button. Locate the file on your computer that you wish to send. Select it, and click OK or Open.

The box should now contain the location of the file, as well as the file's name. Click 'Add' to transfer the file to the SquirrelMail server.

The file's name should now be listed at the bottom of the compose screen, with a checkbox next to it. The other information listed is the MIME type and the file size in parenthesis.

You may add as many attachments to a message as you wish. However, the files should have different names. SquirrelMail will allow you to send a message containing multiple attachments with the same name, but when the recipient saves them, they may accidentally overwrite one with another.

If you wish to delete one or more attachments from this message, check the checkbox next to the attachment(s) you wish to delete and press the 'Delete select attachments' button.

 

 

SquirrelMail sends your attachments in the industry standard MIME format. However, this does nothing to ensure that the person you are sending the file to can read the type of file you are sending. For example, if the file you are sending is a Micorosoft Word 2000 document, and the recipient does not have a program that can open Microsoft Word 2000 documents, the receipient will not be able to view your attachment.

We recommend sending word processing documents in Rich Text Format, spreadsheets in Comma Separated Values (CSV) format, and images in either JPEG or PNG unless you are absolutely sure that the person on the other end has the appropriate software to handle your files.

You should also be mindful of the size in Kilobytes of your attachments. Images, and word processing documents with images in them can get deceptively large. The size of each of your attachments is listed in parenthesis by its name at the bottom of the compose screen.

When the recipient receives your message, his or her email program will attempt to download the message from the mail server to his or her computer. If you have a message with attachments totalling 1 Megabyte (1,024 Kilobytes), then the message will take about 8 minutes to transfer over a 56Kb modem. Since many email programs do not appear to be doing anything when downloading large messages, your receipient may think that their computer has crashed while it is downloading your message! Then they may restart their computer and try all over again with the same results.
Because of this potential situation, you may wish to warn the recipient ahead of time, either via a phone call or a smaller email sent ahead of time, if you intend to send them a large attachment.