E mail on mobiles

[Hopkirk]

If someone has a smart phone, and receives an e-mail, how do they view attachments such as Word documents?

[ChuckFickens]

OK.... to actually go back to what hopkirk is (now) asking.

Outlook express in the way you are using it will connect to your mail server download your mail and delete it from your server. this means it can never be downloaded again, the only copy of it is on your computer now. you are using your email as a client based system (the client being your computer)

Email is more and more going over to server based system, where you can have as many clients as you want (could be phones, a computers or a few other things) and each of those clients just logs into the server and reads the mail, your mail always stays on the server so ever client can access it until you delete it (from any client)

Smartphones work on a server based system generally so you can always get the email again from any other phone or computer.

[ChuckFickens]

Excuse the typos.... (and the use of a computers!)

[society]

Thank you very much Chuck for taking the time to go into details to explain. I understand now...

Hope you had a good Christmas day and got nice presents. x

[cazzz1975]

I check my email via iphone, but generally I wouldnt download a document attachment to my phone, I would probably just read the accompanying email and download the attachment once I get home on my PC

in word you can save your file as a pdf and send it to an iphone

[Hopkirk]

Thanks. It's all getting a bit clearer now.

[Mobius1]

The iPhone can view attachments in your email account depending on what that attachment is. For example, if you've got a GMail account synced with your iPhone and someone sends you an email with a Word document attachment, you can view that attachment in it's proper format right on the phone. However, by default there is no ability to modify it like you'd be able to if you actually opened it in Word or a document editor.

Below is a comparison picture of a document from gmail being viewed on an Android phone on the left, and an iPod (same as iPhone would) on the right. They are both displaying the same word document.

http://img.photobucke...yphadeus/IMG_4279.jpg

My partner uses an iPhone, mine is the Android phone. Neither of us really use the document viewing in the email apps for either, and when we do it's usually photos. There are apps for both systems that will allow limited editing of attachments though I believe.