Recently there was a discussion I believe on this list about the problem of not being able to access e-mail attachments that are embedded in the body of an e-mail instead of being attached in the header. I do not remember seeing a solution to this problem, so I am sharing instructions that I have recently came up with to address this issue.
When you can't find an attachment that you know has been attached to an e-mail, most likely the problem is that the document is embedded in the body of the message. This happens when the message is created in Rich Tex Format (RTF). JAWS is unable to find documents when they are attached in this manner. If you follow the below steps, you will be able to access the attachment. 1. Open the e-mail with the embedded attachment. 2. Use Control+f to forward the e-mail with the attachment. 3. Type your e-mail address in the To field and press Enter. 4. Press and release the Alt key to activate the ribbon. 5. Use the Right and/or Left arrows key to navigate to the Format Text tab. 6. Press the Down arrow once to move to the Lower Ribbon. 7. Press the Tab key 5 times to get to the Format Group Box. 8. Use the Up and Down arrows to navigate through the 3 buttons, HTML, Plain Text and Rich Text. Note that JAWS announces that the Rich Text Format button is pressed. This confirms that the problem is that the attachment is embedded in the body of the message instead of attached in the header. a. If you select HTML by pressing Enter when you are focused on it, you will be returned to your message and you can Tab through the header and find that the document is now attached in the traditional way and JAWS can now find it. b. If you select Plain Text by pressing enter when you are focused on it, you might encounter a dialog box letting you know that some features are not supported and asked if you want to continue. Tab to continue and press Enter. You are returned to your message and you can Tab through the header and find that the document is now attached in the traditional way and JAWS can now find it. 9. Use the Alt+s command to send the message. 10. Once you receive the message you can use your Up or Down arrows to navigate to the new message, and press enter to open it. 11. Use Shift+Tab to move to the attachment field in the header. 12. Use the Right arrow to navigate to the actual attachment and press Enter to open it. NOTE: If you anticipate only needing to read this document only this one time, you do not need to actually send the message to yourself. Skip adding your e-mail address and just tab to the attachment and open it. For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
