I don’t know why it happens, but it happens with disturbing frequency. A customer wants to report a problem, and then illustrate it with a screenshot or two, but instead of attaching the screenshots, they paste the screenshots inside a Word document (and for some reason it’s always Word) and then attach the Word document.<\/p>\n
It’s not a Christmas present. People aren’t going to say “Wow, I wonder what’s inside? I’m brimming with anticipation!” They’re going to say, “Oh great, I can’t even see the screen shot. I have to download the attachment, scan it for viruses, then load it into Word. Oh wait, this is a Word 2007 document and I only have Word 2003; let me run the converter first. Okay good, now I can open the document to see, oh, look, it’s a picture.” Most people won’t bother. And then you’re going to wonder why nobody answered your first message<\/a>. <\/p>\n If you insist on attaching the pictures, just attach them directly. And use a compressed image format like JPG or PNG, please. Don’t send uncompressed screenshots; they are ridiculously huge. Cropping the image to the relevant portion of the screen helps, too. (This is very easy to do with the Snipping Tool<\/a>.) <\/p>\n In March of this year, a customer wrote, “I have attached a Word document that describes the problem.” (Hey, here’s an idea: Why not describe the problem in your email message?) <\/p>\n The Word document contained a screenshot. <\/p>\n The screenshot was of an email message. <\/p>\n The email message contained a screenshot<\/i>. <\/p>\n Bonus remark from the customer liaison: “Once you open the document, you may need to zoom it further to read it.” <\/p>\n