Brian Tillman said:
That's because you rreply doesn't contain any attachments until you
specifically attach them. Replies never include the attachment from the
original message because the recipient already has the attachment. After
all, they're the one who sent it to you in the first place.
Brian,
Following are two situations I run into somewhat frequently that appear to
contradict the conclusions you have drawn above...
I send an email to a recruiter with my resume attached or an email to a
client with a proposal attached; upon receiving the emails, the recruiter
and the client open their attachments, read them, perhaps print them,
formulate some questions for me, save the open documents to their My
Documents folder or some other sub-folder, close the open documents and
reply to my email with the questions they had formulated moments earlier;
after receiving their replies, I reply to their replies and address each of
their questions or concerns often times referring to the original document
(file) sent in my initial email. NOW THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART: As a
sales and marketing professional, I want to do every reasonable thing within
my power to make my customers', clients', service providers', everyone's
life as uncomplicated and simple as reasonably possible; in other words, I
want to make doing business with me as easy as reasonably possible and
certainly easier than my competition. Likewise, I prefer my software to
make my life as easy as reasonably possible... this is a very important
consideration in all purchases of mine just as is it for my customers,
clients, etc. Let's jump into my client's shoes for a moment... If he has
similar beliefs about creating easy working environments, he would want to
reply to my email with his questions and concerns AND a copy of the proposal
so that he would not have to create a situation where I must then go find
the proposal on my hard drive and if he is lazy like me, he would prefer not
having to hunt for the saved proposal on his hard drive just to be helpful
to me. Let's jump back into my shoes now and let's assume his reply does
not included my original proposal for my easy reference... When I reply to
his reply, I still want to make doing business with me as easy as reasonably
possible; so, I have to re-attach the original proposal. Now, if his initial
reply, i.e., without the attachment, contained a reference to the attachment
and included its filename, I might not feel so compelled to re-attach the
original document to my reply, but simply refer my client to the document
listed as the attachment in my original email which is usually incorporated
into the body of each succeeding reply as a matter of historical or
documentary record.
Let me close by saying your statement "Replies never include attachments"
may be true for Microsoft communication products, but I assure you a good
number of PC-based and web-based email programs do certainly allow you to
include attachments in replies and most of these offer a checkbox in the
compose mode allowing you to choose whether or not to include the
attachment(s).
Best regards,
Steve
