Working From Email Attachments

When you email a file to yourself and open the attachment to work on, you MUST save the attachment to your system first (i.e. My Documents or desktop). When you download your attachment, do not choose “Open”; choose “Save”. Then open the saved file from the location in which you saved it (My Documents, for example).

If you choose “Open” to work on your files, you will lose your progress, even if you save as you work. This is NOT reversible. We CANNOT recover your lost progress. When you open an attachment from your email, you are only working from a temporary file that is deleted when the computer restarts. When you save the attachment instead, you are creating a file that is stored permanently.

Please keep this simple step in mind as you work on important projects and papers.

More information is available from an external site, Ask Leo.

Alternatives To EMailing Files To Yourself

Instead of emailing files to yourself, we recommend any of the following:

• Use Flagler Connect  if you need to work on assignments from a campus Windows computer. allows you to connect directly to your files stored on Flagler's servers from anywhere.These files are backed up every hour, so you don't need to worry about losing anything.
• Transport a copy (but not the ONLY copy!) of your document on a USB drive.
• Use an online file storage service, such as DropBox, Box, SugarSync, iCloud, or Google Docs. (Please note that we do not provide technical support on these services as they have their own technical support.)

Do you have your own way of managing files across computers? Let us know!