Why am I not able to attach Numbers and Pages documents to my e-mails?

[mudkipz]

I've done some work on Numbers and Pages (both 2008) on my MacBook. For some reason when I try to attach these documents to an email to send to my boss, they are grayed out so that I cannot click them and attach them. I've tried using my university's system as well as hotmail, ymail and gmail, so I assume it has something to do with recognition of the files. How can I fix this / send them to him?

So far, I have tried to change the Numbers documents to .xls, but this does not solve my problem. In this form, the properties ("Get Info") tell me that it is a Microsoft Excel document, but Numbers won't open it and in won't send via email.

I have other .xls documents on my computer that I either received by email or downloaded, the icon on my desktop is different, Numbers reads it and they can be attached to emails.

It seems that even though I change the .numbers files to .xls, there is still something missing for them to really be Excel files or at least sendable.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[pdjudd]

You have to export Numbers files to excel from within Numbers. Renaming them to .xls will not do the trick.

 

[memco]

Alternatively, you can zip the files by selecting them, right clicking and choosing "Compress..." This will create a .zip file which gmail (and most likely the others) will allow you to attach to an email to send.

 

[PeggyD]

A Pages or Numbers '08 version document is actually a package, a special kind of folder that appears as a single file, but isn't. You can't e-mail a folder which is why many mail clients balk. Apple Mail will automatically zip a folder, other e-mail clients don't, especially web-based e-mail. In the Finder, Control- or right-click on the Pages/Numbers document & choose Create Archive… (Tiger) or Compress… (Leopard) from the contextual menu. You will now have a zipped Pages document that you can attach to your e-mail & send.

Your recipient must have Pages/Numbers to be able to open your files. If s/he doesn't, you can export the Pages document as Word or PDF or the Numbers file as Excel or PDF & send that.

The '09 version allows saving as a flat file or a package. The above applies to the packages, the flat files can be attached to an e-mail. Still the recipient must have the application to open the files.