How to send worry-free attachments to friends, family, and colleagues

By: Winnie Anderson

I’m on the newsletter list of a little church I attend when I travel to western New York and at least every other month they have to send out a second email with another version of their newsletter. The body of the email includes a variation of the same statement – people had problems opening the newsletter so the secretary is sending a new version.

I’m tired of reading it, so I know she must be tired of typing it.

And I’m sure the people getting the documents are tired of getting things they can’t open.

With people using multiple versions of Microsoft Office products and the fear of getting some virus on your machine, people are afraid to open attachments even if they know, like, and trust you.

And if you’re job hunting and sending out resumes this has the potential to be an even bigger problem.

I know people who’ve sent resumes out and have gotten replies that the person on the other end wasn’t able to open the document.

Makes you wonder how many other people weren’t able to open it that didn’t tell them about it.

Then there was a friend who worked in an office where half of the people couldn’t open attachments from the other half.

If you’re sending a document that just needs to be read by the person receiving it, the best solution is to convert your document into a PDF.

PDF stands for Portable Document Format and it was created by Adobe in the early 1990s. It’s become the standard for making documents readable across platforms.

Buying Adobe’s software to turn your documents into PDFs sounds like a great idea — if you’ve got several hundred dollars lying around and you can’t think of a better way to spend it, the simplest (and cheapest) thing to do is head over to http://www.cutepdf.com/ and download their free converter software.

Once you’ve got this handy tool on your hard drive it will take you less than a minute to convert a document into a PDF.

Just go to File>Print and then choose CutePDF from the list of options.

A window will open that will allow you to rename the document and save it wherever you want it on your drive. Then just attach it to your email and you’re good to go.

It’s that easy to create documents that are easy for everyone to open and are readable across systems. And, if you’re using this to convert your resume and cover letter to PDFs you’ll stand out even more from everyone else who sends a plain Word document. Sending PDFs says you have a certain level of knowledge others don’t, you’re considerate because you thought about the person on the receiving end, and you’re detail-oriented because you took these extra steps to make sure your documents were readable.

About the Author:

 Winnie Anderson is Chief Strategy Maven with Virtual Marketing Mavens. She helps service businesses create a strong web presence to attract, engage, and retain more of their ideal clients. She speaks and trains business owners and their staff to use web tools to market their business more effectively. Find out more at http://virtualmarketingmavens.com/