Email Attachments | Help Center

Email Attachments

PRO

eucatastrophe 12/02/2013 21:13

Platform:All

The ability to forward tasks with email attachments is crucial. I am researching GTD software for my organization and this is a requirement.

I wonder how people process email/to-do list without this feature. For instance, if I have a proposal sent to me in an email attachment, and I plan to review the proposal next week, I can't do that simply without forwarding the email (with attachment). Otherwise, I have to manually move the file (and still cannot link it to a task).

I like what I see with DoIt.IM, but I would need a strategy for this before moving forward for our organization.

Folke post on 12/02/2013 22:16#1

PRO

@eucatastrophe

I have many emails both with and without attachments, and I find that they seldom have a one-to-one correspondence with my tasks. More often than not, the final tasks can relate to many different attachments from many different sources, and vice versa; one email can result in many more than just one task. So, I always file my reference material securely and entirely independently of the task manager app.

Doit currently does allow you, though, to past links into your tasks, and Doit staff have said they will implement support for attachments, so if you want to forward them I believe it is only a matter of time until you can.
eucatastrophe post on 12/03/2013 14:55#3

PRO

@Folke

Thanks for the response. In this process of looking at new tools, I am also re-visiting my whole process so suggestions like yours are very helpful. I like your approach, in theory, but my concern is the added time to download a file and correctly reference it in a task. For me, keeping my email free and clear is important.

Again, thanks for your thoughts.
Folke post on 12/03/2013 16:26#4

PRO

@eucatastrophe

Agreed. The email inbox is definitely not the best place to keep reference material in the long term. Neither is the task manager.

I suppose you know that some people and apps depend heavily on Evernote. Although this can be quite convenient, I have been reluctant to tie myself in so hard with Evernote or with a particular task manager. So what I do instead, and always have, is I "manually" store all reference material in my long-term archive, which I keep organized in a way that suits my anticipated long-term needs, and which is perfectly syncable with absolutely any of the general cloud storage services (e.g. GDrive, Sugarsync, Box, Dropbox etc). As a consequence, since I can always easily find what I need in my reference material, and for the reasons mentioned in my previous post, I am not as dependent as many others on having links and attachments etc in my tasks.

But I am still open to new avenues for storing reference material more easily in an appropriate long-term environment, especially if the solution is a bit "generic" and does not commit me to a particular provider, so I would be very interested to learn what results you come up with. I might well follow suit.