WORKING WITH EMAIL ATTACHMENTS


You may recall from Chapter 6, "Managing Messages," that not all the content of an email is sent to the handheld initially. Long email messages are divided into chunks and only the first chunk is sent to the handheld. Attachments are handled in much the same way, where only some of the information is actually delivered to the device. The rest is cached on your BlackBerry Enterprise Server. When a message with an attachment is delivered, only a "stub" or placeholder is provided for the attachment. You can see that the message has an attachment, but most of the time you cannot access the attachment itself.

This is done for the same time and cost reasons that were discussed in the "Viewing More Text in a Long Email" section of Chapter 6. Additionally, there just isn't enough Flash RAM on your device to store attachments locally. With only 8MB of FlashRAM on a 7280, it would take only one really large Word document to use up all the available storage. Some PowerPoint attachments wouldn't be able to fit at all.

V-CARD ATTACHMENTS

note

It is not possible in any way to modify an attachment. All of these features discussed in this chapter are for viewing the data in an attachment only.


V-card attachments (.VCF) are the only kind of attachments delivered to the handheld without plug-ins. (Other attachment types are possible using the BlackBerry Attachment Service; see below for details.) V-cards are allowed because they are generally small and because the BlackBerry client can create messages with attachments using this format for sharing contact information. Figure 7.1 shows a message with a V-card attachment.

Figure 7.1. A message with a V-card attachment.


When you scroll the trackwheel so that the cursor is on a V-card attachment, the View Attachment item is added to the menu, and selecting it displays a screen listing all of the contact information contained in the V-card.

The address is not copied to the Address Book automatically. If the Address Book contains an entry whose name matches that of the V-card, an Update Address menu item is available on the View Attachment screen. If not, the Add to Address Book menu item is available. Selecting the appropriate menu item causes the data in the V-card to be updated or inserted into the Address Book.

note

We haven't talked about the Address Book in depth yet. To learn more about the Address Book application, see Chapter 10.


If you want to send a V-Card to another person, simply compose an email message to him. Then, before sending the message, click the Attach Address menu item. This will display a screen listing all of the Contacts in your Address Book. Select the proper name in the list and click the Continue menu item. You will be returned to the email you were composing, and now there is an Address Book attachment shown at the bottom of the screen.

OTHER KINDS OF ATTACHMENTS

V-Cards are neat, but you probably don't get them as often as you do other kinds of files. File attachments such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Adobe Acrobat files are far more common. For this, you must have the BlackBerry Attachment Service installed on your BlackBerry Enterprise Server. If you are using the BlackBerry Web Client, your BlackBerry Enterprise Server is operated by your wireless carrier and most likely has the Attachment Service installed. Check with your carrier for more information.

The Attachment Service supports only a few of the most common formats. Table 7.1 lists the file types and the applications that create them.

Table 7.1. Accepted File Formats for Attachments

Application

Extension

Supported Versions

Adobe Acrobat

.pdf

1.1 and later

Microsoft Excel

.xls

97 and later

Microsoft Word

.doc

97 and later

Microsoft PowerPoint

.ppt

97 and later

Corel WordPerfect

.wpd

6.0 to 2000

Compressed Archive

.zip

2.6 and earlier

HTML

.html, .htm

All

ASCII Text

.txt

All


There is really only one way to find out if your handheld is configured to view attachments or not, and that is to try to view one. To start with, you need to receive an email with an attachment. The attachment stub should be shown at the bottom of the message, like the one shown in Figure 7.2. The attachment must be one of the supported types listed in Table 7.1.

Figure 7.2. A message with a Microsoft Word document attachment.


Once you have received a message with an attachment, you need to click the trackwheel to display the menu and scroll down to the Open Attachment menu item. If the menu item is not shown then either the attachment is not one of the supported types or the BlackBerry Enterprise Server that your handheld uses does not have the Attachment Service installed.

After clicking the Open Attachment menu item, you are shown a screen that lists all of the files in the message in a tree view. If your message contained more than one attachment, each attachment will be shown in the list, regardless of which attachment stub you selected, assuming they are of the supported types, of course. If the message contained an attachment that is a compressed archive, then the name of each file in that archive is also shown as a node under the name of the archive.

Each file can be opened in two ways. The options are as a Table of Contents or Full Content. These two choices are listed under each filename node in the tree view. This can make for a lot of items in the tree, especially with a compressed archive containing many files. For this reason, the filename nodes of the tree can be collapsed or expanded using the Collapse and Expand menu items to make it easier to see what you are looking for.

note

All the files in a compressed archive are listed, even if the file type is not one of the supported types. You can still attempt to view the attachment, but it will fail to open and will display a red "X" icon next to the open type in the tree.


If your message has only one attachment in it, then the filename node is expanded by default, but if it has more than one attachment or is a compressed archive, then the nodes will be collapsed by default to make sure as many filenames as possible can be shown.

To open the attachment, select the desired filename node from the tree and click the Expand menu item to display the two ways to view the file. Next, select either Table of Contents or Full Content and click the Retrieve menu item.

Once this is done, the icon next to the open type turns to a clock indicating that you need to wait for it to communicate back to the server and get the data you need. This process can sometimes take a little while, and of course you must be in an area with wireless coverage to do it.

OPENING AN ATTACHMENT AS A TABLE OF CONTENTS

The idea behind opening an attachment as a table of contents is to deliver an outline of the data that is in the attachment and then retrieve the contents in small chunks. This is good because opening the full content can take more time to process and transmit and uses a lot of the bandwidth, which your calling plan may limit.

note

Retrieving the full content of a document can be good when you know you will want to view the document later and will not be in coverage, such as on an airplane.


Each piece of the outline is shown as a node under the Table of Contents node, and the Table of Contents node itself becomes collapsible and expandable, just like filename node. What exactly goes into the table of contents varies depending on what kind of file it is. Generally speaking, this is the first line of a page of the file. To view a portion of the document, select the outline representing that portion of the document and again select the Retrieve menu item. When that portion of the document is retrieved, it will put a check mark icon next to the node in the tree.

OPENING AN ATTACHMENT AS FULL CONTENT

If you know you want to view the entire attachment, opening it using the Full Content menu item is the way to go. Select the Full Content node under the filename node and click the Retrieve menu item. As noted in the previous section, this can take more time, but will ultimately be worth it as you can read the entire document without waiting to retrieve more chunks. Once any portion of a document has been retrieved, a check mark icon is placed next to the Full Content node of the attachment tree.



Mobile Guide to BlackBerry
Mobile Guide to BlackBerry
ISBN: 0789733439
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 146
Authors: Bill Foust

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