Russ, your suspicion that most people sending these attachments don't
know that they're doing so is probably justified.  We had problems in
the past with people sending LARGE attachments (pretty pictures in gif
or jpg format) -- that was easily solved with the line limit.

But the new game is this fancy email formatting -- you get to attach
your calling card, or you get to write in color or Comic Sans, or that
lovely trick from Microsoft where you get two, two, two messages in
one.
In almost every case, the poster had absolutely NO idea of the trouble
that they were causing.

A lot of the new mailers set these fancy bells and whistels as the
DEFAULT, may they burn in ... well, Texas 125 degree heat these days ...

So I have to explain how to turn it OFF, and that's not so easy!!!!!!!!

I wish if they were going to add their bells and whistles, they would
also have one that sends "discussion list-appropriate text" -- just
click on that, and it all comes out all right.  Sigh.

In the meantime, it's set the sizelimit for the long attachments, and
then go poster to poster and explain about the smaller ones and why
they're a pain (I copy what it looked like when it showed up at MY
address -- take out a key symbol so it doesn't just reformat correctly
when it gets back to them!) --

While we're at it, you'll have to tell a lot of new subscribers to turn
off the automatic echoing, too.  My favorite is I think Microsoft
Outlook, which is putting the entire replied-to message in the FRONT,
then leaving a blank page to write on, so the writer doesn't even SEE it
unless they happen to scroll up.  I have a lot of new posters come in
and have no idea why they are sending all that extra baggage.

Mary
The CFIDS/M.E. Information Page:  http://www.cfids-me.org/