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Saving and Viewing Attachments Within Alpine

E-mails sometimes contain more than just text. They contain other files along with the text. Such file may be a picture (.jpg file), a resume (in a .doc file), or a spreadsheet (a .xls file). Any file sent along with an e-mail is known as an attachment. In Alpine attachments cannot be viewed instantly if they are not text files. The file must first be saved to the home directory of your account, then downloaded to your local computer, and finally it can be viewed in the corresponding application. This tutorial will guide you on how to save, download and view an attachment.

Identifying Attachments

1. First of all you must recognize that you have an attachment. Once you are in Alpine and you are reading you e-mail, if you have an attachment, a message will appear along with your e-mail.

   

2. The e-mail will give you a list of how many components or parts it is composed of. In this case, there are 2;
   1. The text of the e-mail
   2. The attachment

   The message body includes the message , if any, and also includes the type of file that the attachment is (a GIF image in this case), the file size (2 KB in this case), and it tells you that the file cannot be displayed.

Saving the Attachment:

1. In our case we are going to use the e-mail from the screen shot shown above.
2. The image must be saved to the home directory of your account.
3. Press V on the keyboard. A new interface will appear:

   

4. The list of the components of the e-mail are listed again. Using the arrow key, select the part of the e-mail that you would like to save, once it is highlighted, press the S on the keyboard. A message appears toward the bottom of your screen. The message reads: Copy attachment to file in home directory: logo.gif.

   

5. Alpine will automatically save the file onto the home directory. The message appears in order for a name to be given to the file. In most cases the name of the file will already be there. The name that is there is the original name that was given to the file by the person who sent it. If you would like to rename the file use the delete key, and type in the new name for the file.

   NOTE: make sure, that if you rename the file, the extension of the file is the same as the original extension.

6. Press the Enter key on your keyboard to save the file. You should go back to this screen:

   

7. A short, one-line message appears toward the bottom of the screen confirming that the file was written/saved to the home directory.

Transferring and Viewing the File

1. Once the file is on the home directory of your account, the file must be downloaded onto the hard drive of your local computer. To do this you must use an FTP application.
2. Once the file is on your local hard drive, use the corresponding application to view the file. In this example the file is "logo.gif", an image file, and this file can be viewed with applications such as Adobe Photoshop.