Attach/forward e-mail at the end of a reply

[Claus Atzenbeck]

Hi all:

I want to reply to an e-mail AND forward/attach another e-mail to my
reply.

Is there a way to do this? -- I have Alpine 1.0 on Mac OS X.

There is at least one workaround, but this one is very time consuming:

1. In Alpine select the mail which is to be attached/inserted to the
reply and hit F for "forward message".
2. Save the so created message as text file (including "Forwarded
Message" line), but don't send it.
3. Reply to the e-mail and insert the previously saved text file at the
end of the reply.

Very time consuming...

Any hints? Thanks.
Claus

[Lucio Chiappetti]

I want to reply to an e-mail AND forward/attach another e-mail to my reply.
1. In Alpine select the mail which is to be attached/inserted to the
reply and hit F for "forward message".
2. Save the so created message as text file (including "Forwarded
Message" line), but don't send it.
3. Reply to the e-mail and insert the previously saved text file at the
end of the reply.

I would do like this :

1) enter message to be attached and Export it to a file (could as
well Save it to a folder instead of Exporting)
2) Reply to mail, and either user ^R in body to include the file
(I won't bother about the "Forwarded" line or add a custom one,
it's not standard anyhow) or better use ^J in header to attach
it.

Alternatively

1) compose message reply, ^O to postpone it, go into postponed
folder and Export it to file (if reply is long). Otherwise
just copy-and-paste to some external clipboard utility (I use
xclipboard under Linux). In general I use the clipboard to
concatenate several replies (e.g. to different messages of a thread
in a discussion)

2) go to message to be forwarded and Forward (if you deem the
fwd and "Forwarded" line valuable) then use ^R to include the
saved file on top or bottom as you prefer

Alternatively again

1) compose message reply and postpone
2) go to postponed folder and move it to the folder where the
message to be forwarded is
3) select both messages (with : )
4) use A F (Apply Forward) to send both as a MIME digest

Pity that MIME digests are not handled as virtual folders by Alpine.

I do not find any of the above solutions very time consuming.

[Claus Atzenbeck]

Thanks, Lucio. Your solutions are similar to mine. Yes, someone can do
this, but if you do this regularly, producing 2 mails (forward and
reply), saving one and loading it into the other as well as deleting the
saved file afterwards is quite annoying. -- In fact, it became so
annoying to me that I first send the reply mentioning there there will
will be another e-mail with the forwarded message. That's not a good
solution either.

A better solution would be if you could select another e-mail to be
attached as "Forwarded Message" (or attachment, depending on the
preference settings) directly after pressing "reply".

I could imagine this feature as part of ^J (add attachment) where you
could add not only files, but also other e-mails.

Do the Alpine developer have any opinion about this?

Cheers,
Claus

[R. Stewart Ellis]

Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:19:12 +0100 (CET)
Subject: Re: [Pine-info] Attach/forward e-mail at the end of a reply
Thanks, Lucio. Your solutions are similar to mine. Yes, someone can do this,
but if you do this regularly, producing 2 mails (forward and reply), saving
one and loading it into the other as well as deleting the saved file
afterwards is quite annoying. -- In fact, it became so annoying to me that I
first send the reply mentioning there there will will be another e-mail with
the forwarded message. That's not a good solution either.

What I do is to select both the message I want to reply to and the
message I want to forward (they have to be in the same folder) and
then do an aggregate reply or aggregate forward, depending on the
purpose of doing this. Then using my editor (jove, more featureful
than pico, MUCH lighter than emacs) I either add quotes to the message
I am replying to or remove quotes from the one I want to look like a
forward.

That seems like a few fewer strokes/steps than the other two methods.

A better solution would be if you could select another e-mail to be attached
as "Forwarded Message" (or attachment, depending on the preference settings)
directly after pressing "reply".
I could imagine this feature as part of ^J (add attachment) where you could
add not only files, but also other e-mails.
Do the Alpine developer have any opinion about this?
Cheers,
Claus
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[Stefan]

Hi!

What about Ctrl-R Ctrl-W (insert message from current folder)?

You have to know the message number in current folder, though.

Greetings, Stefan

[Claus Atzenbeck]

Post by Stefan
What about Ctrl-R Ctrl-W (insert message from current folder)?
You have to know the message number in current folder, though.

Does not work for three reasons:

1. I'm using an external editor explicitly (vim)
2. This includes a message as quote, not the way it would look when
forwarded ("Forwarded Message", etc.)
3. It does not automatically include attachments of the forwarded
message.

Anyway, thanks for all your tips.

Claus

[Matt Ackeret]

In general I use the clipboard to concatenate several replies (e.g. to
different messages of a thread in a discussion)

You do realize you can select multiple messages and just hit 'r', right?
That will put the contents of all of the messages in the reply

I presume it is 'officially' a reply to the first message you're replying to,
but I'm not sure.

[Claus Atzenbeck]

Post by Matt Ackeret
You do realize you can select multiple messages and just hit 'r', right?
That will put the contents of all of the messages in the reply
I presume it is 'officially' a reply to the first message you're replying to,
but I'm not sure.

In fact, that is true. You can select several messages and do A R
(apply+reply) to have them all quoted in your mail. This may work in
some cases. Cool feature, however, not quite what I need:

1. In most cases I would like to reply to one message and forward
another one with that one.

2. A R requires to have both messages within the same folder, which is
not always the case.

3. A R apparently puts all senders as recipients for the new mail.

Maybe a "attach mail as forwarded message" feature will come up in a
future Alpine release.

Claus