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Death to Attachments

From Tony Hirst:

If an email comes with an attachment, then I suspect that in a large number of cases the sender is probably using the wrong medium. So for example, this morning I found in my mailbox:

Three seminar announcements with *ALL* the details in an attached word file (nothing in the body of the message). (“Please find enclosed details of our next seminar” – you know the sort of thing…)

Two newsletters as PDF attachments (they’re available on the web as well…)

Yes, I hate that… and if you’re on a slower machine, you spend the next several minutes opening different applications (Word, Excel, Acrobat), wait for the virus scan ..etc, only to wonder how than organize it all…

Here’s Tony’s solution:

So I think I may try a new mail rule:

if attachment then

  • silently delete AND
  • reply-to-sender “Please find another way of letting me see the document you sent as an enclosure – I do have a browser, you know… If the document is for commenting on by several people, try Google docs, Zoho, or Microsoft Live whatever it’s called…”

I love it… like I’ve said before, Attachments are Evil – Link, don’t Send.