trying to print a document from an e-mail, fairly urgent would appreciate advice.

[Linnet]

Our printer has broken and dd1 has homework that she has to print out for school. She has typed up the document and I've sent it to myself in an e-mail as an attachment and I was going to go to the library to print it out.

I opened the e-mail to check that the document was there and tried to open it to check but it keeps giving me a error message saying it can't open it and that the file may be corrupt.

Have I done something wrong in attaching it to the e-mail? I don't want to go all the way to the library then find I can't print it out. I don't have a memory stick to save it onto either so it has to be this way.

Please can anyone help?

I'd send myself another email with it attached and try that before you go. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

I've tried sending it in three different e-mails but it still won't work. I'm confused because my friend at work doesn't have a printer and she sends herself e-mails all the time then prints them out at work, we are allowed to do this. It seems to work for her so I thought I'd try it.

Sounds like there is something wrong with the file. Can you still open it on the computer your daughter wrote it on?

(I probably still won't be able to help, but hey, I'm keeping it bumped for you!).

That is odd, what kind of file is it? (What are the three letters after the dot, e.g. .Doc, .pdf, .jpg?

Yes I can open it on the laptop perfectly well. I've saved it twice because she's written it in works and I'm pretty sure that the library only have word2003,so I've saved it in documents under both types and sent both of them to myself in separate e-mails but they won't open.
It just seems really odd.

thanks for your help though.

Bertie it's saved as a .doc file and also a .wps file. neither one will open.

Ok, most odd, I couldn't get into my usual aol account so I sent it to my hotmail account where it didn't work. My aol account is now letting me log in so sent them there and it's still not letting me open them.

I think I'll go out and buy a new printer. Stupid schools, why can't they just let chidlren write out their homework like they used to.

Thanks for your help though

Does she have an email account at school? Could you email it to her and she could show the teacher on the screen? Oh, of course, this is assuming it will open... how odd. Worth a try perhaps? At the very least it will show the teacher she has done it, and maybe she can borrow a memory stick from someone today so that she can print it out at school tomorrow.

Personally, I would save it as a 'rtf' as this is quite a portable format.

Other options would be to download something like PrimoPDF or CutePDF which are programs which allow you to create pdf files.

PDF stands for portable document format, and just about any pc and operating system will open and read it, and then allow you to print it.

The only thing that could go wrong is that the pc in the library might not have Adobe Acrobat (the pdf reader) installed, but I would have thought they would.

As it's homework (and presumably nothing sensitive) do you want to send it to someone on here and see if they can open it?

happy to help if I can

Thanks for your help, I went out and bought a new printer. We needed one anyway I just hadn't got round to buying it yet. I've now printed out the homework for her.

Dd doesn't have a school e-mail account, she has her own e-mail account here at home but I'm not sure, off the top of my head, what access they have to computers at school. I know that in a few weeks when the new campus opens there will be access to computers in the library at the new campus.

The main library in town does have Adobe acrobat on it's public computers.

Thanks again for your help.

Another of those "print it but it saves as a PDF" is 'doPDF' (for Windows). I use it all the time to store info, and the PDFs should be more 'transportable' than many other formats, since linux etc all have PDF readers.

One possible thing - depends a little on how you access your e-mail to send documents - some apps (like MS Outlook / Outlook Express) may include document format / language / character set controls on how to handle characters, and there's a small chance an attachment might need to be ZIPped to avoid any strange modifications).

Just for good measure, I'd try sending the document to your work e-mail address and see if it could be opened there. If so, you have proved that it was sent OK, but on receipt, something went wrong. Of course, if it fails, you've proved that sending it was the cause of the problem.

It may seem academic, but there may be some time when you know a document needs to be sent to someone at your office, and if sending it is the problem, you will have chance to do more checking to find out what went wrong.