iPhone Attachments Made Easy

The modern smartphone user has well over 700,000 apps to choose from. One of the most important types of apps is email. If you are an iPhone user, you may be using Apple’s Mail, which comes installed on the phone. While it is a solid app, there is one function that causes some confusion – email attachments.

Below is a brief overview of how iPhone’s Mail app’s attachments work.

How to open an attachment

If you get an email with an attachment, open the message and scroll down to the bottom of the message. You will see the name of the attachment along with the file type and size. If you tap on it, your phone should open it in a new window. You can then zoom in/out and scroll around.

Some attachments can be downloaded by tapping and holding on the attachment. After about a second, a pop-up menu will show, and you should be able to select to save it. Instead of saving the attachment, you can also choose to open it using other apps.

Why won’t some attachments open?

There may be a time where you get an email with an attachment that can’t be opened. You will still be able to see it in the email, but you won’t be able to tap on it. This is because the Mail app doesn’t support all file and document types.

Don’t worry if you can’t open an attachment as chances are there’s an app in the App store that will open it. The easiest thing to do is look at the file type of the attachment, which is usually indicated by a three letter code at the end of the file name. For example, a Word document will be FILENAME.doc or FILENAME.docx. A quick Internet search for something like, ‘iPhone app that can open .ddd‘ will usually return results with an app that can open your file.

Once you download the app, try pressing and holding on the attachment in Mail and selecting Open in… from the pop-up menu. Look for the app you downloaded and tap on it.

How to add an attachment to emails
You can add an attachment to an email by pressing and holding on the body section of a new email. A pop-up menu should come up, if you scroll left you should see the Select/Paste option. Tapping on this will allow you to select either a photo, video or message which you can attach to the email. Unfortunately, there isn’t much else you can attach, so if you need to attach a document or other file type, you would be better off doing so on your computer.

If you would like to learn more about the iPhone and how it can help you, please contact us today.