Just got a quote. As a pdf. Which is a great start. Everybody should send quotes as PDFs, not as word documents. That one should be pretty obvious, but sadly it is not. I tell people by now that I will not be able to read their Microsoft Word Documents. They often don’t even know what they have sent. They think that Word Documents are the only way to store text on a computer.
The second issue with attachments is much easier to fix since it happens on a logical level: Name the document so that it makes sense on the hard drive of the receiving end! Don’t send me something called ‘quote.pdf’. Or ‘wacker.pdf’. That might be interesting for you, but not where the document will be used and found: On my drive.
Do yourself a favor and call it: “source.function.date.dpf”. “Function” being “quote” or “invoice” or “memo”. Source is you, so that I know where this came from. And then date. Date I would always express as year-month-day. With leading zero on month and day. This will be recognises as the same date on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific and it sorts files nicely by, gasp, date in any text listing.
But PDF instead of Microsoft Word is really the most step forward into attachment sanity.