The Number One Mistake We Make When Sharing Email Attachments

"Hey Anum, the attachment didn't come through. Mind re-sending?"

^I hate this email.

这是一个,我们都不可避免地会以某种形式。And it's because - even though I know better - I keep making thesame mistake. While it may not seem like a huge deal, for me, effective email etiquette is among the little things that make us more productive email communicators.

This sloppy mistake happened most recently when a designer on our team shared a visual for a blog post and I replied to show another content team member. The email thread went like so:

D'oh. What a waste of time and space in each of our respective inboxes.

Fortunately, there are two solutions:

1.If you were the original sender, re-attach the image when replying.

2.If you weren't the original sender (and don't want to download, save, and then attach the image in your reply), simply click forward instead. While attachments don't retain on replies, they do on forwarded emails.

So, forward the email to the additional person you want to see the attachment and include the original sender on that email.

The second one is my preferred solution. With it, the thread above would instead look like this:

A quick fix for an irking email pet peeve. Hopefully writing this out here will help me avoid making the same mistake again, too.