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Open Parenthesis is a blog about free and open source software, next generation internet strategy, and the assembled web, written by John Eckman (me).

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November 20, 2008
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It’s about time

Tagged with: , , , , , , , — John @ 3:03 pm

Why isn’t this a feature of every modern email system?

Forgotten Attachment Detector

Forgotten Attachment Detector

(This is a feature on Gmail Labs, which you’ll find under the settings label in Gmail)

The use case is so simple. The user writes “Attached you’ll find” or “in the attached” or something like that - basically anywhere they use the word “attached” - if there is no attachment, ask the user if that’s ok.

The number of times you say “attached” and don’t mean to attach a file is presumably outweighed by the number of times you mean to attach a file but hit send before you attach it.

How can I get this in Apple Mail or (sigh of the reluctant user) Entourage to do this?

Trackback url for this post: http://www.openparenthesis.org/2008/11/20/its-about-time/trackback

8 Comments for this post
noah Says:

Go to Gmail -> Settings -> Accounts -> Get mail from other accounts
:-P

Eric Says:

That is nice. I imagine I would have seen that message many times had it been installed in Entourage or other email programs I’ve used over the years.

BTW, I haven’t moved to Mail. I keep trying it, and I keep disliking it. I actually like Entourage, despite its massive user database sizes.

Chris Bloom Says:

Thunderbird has a similar plugin, or at least it did when I used it before switching to gmail.

Tom Clancy Says:

I got pissed at this for false positives recently. Kept doing it to me. Then I realized I should have been attaching my resume to those application emails.
/sheepish

Ed Says:

There used to be a plugin to do JUST THIS for Mail.app for 10.4. I haven’t found it again for 10.5 though, but it probably still exists.

John Says:

Ed - thanks for the note. I did a bit o’ google and found what looks like an updated version:
Attachment Scanner Plugin

It says it works with Mail.app on 10.4 or later, and references Leopard - I’m going to try it out.

Sal Darji Says:

I believe Kmail has this feature. It scans the message for words like “attachment”. If it finds the word but there is no attachment, it will alert the user.

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