Dear Dr. Info, I've been doing email for a long time now, but this quarter my professor is giving me assignments with email attachments. This means that instead of sending you a text file, your professor can send you a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document, and when you save it to your workstation you can then use it with the application it is associated with.
Attachments also work to send zip files or other program files through the internet.
When you save the attachments they are saved to your workstation and you may then access them with the associated application. There is the additional step of transferring the attachment files from your account on the central computers to your workstation. This is the step that differs depending on the program you use to connect to the central computers. Now the documents are on your local workstation and you can access them with whatever application they are associated with. The procedure is very similar is you wish to email someone an attachment, but I thought it might be helpful to outline it for you.