Patent ID: 8903929

Claim:
In an environment wherein electronic messages may be sent with or without an attachment, a method for determining whether an electronic message suggests that there should be an attachment, the message having a subject line and a body, the method comprising: inspecting a message to determine whether the message already has an attachment; if the message does not already have an attachment then inspecting the subject line of the message or the body of the message to determine a likelihood that the message should have an attachment; and if the subject line of the message or the body of the message indicates that the message should have an attachment then providing a suggestion to a user that the message may need an attachment; wherein inspecting the subject line of the message comprises: searching the subject line of the message for presence of at least one predetermined keyword, if at least one predetermined keyword is present, then providing the suggestion, and if no predetermined keyword is present, then inspecting the body of the message, and wherein inspecting the body of the message comprises: parsing the message to identify at least one sentence within the message, inspecting the at least one sentence for at least one of presence of at least one predetermined word, for presence of at least one statistically significant phrase, or at least one template match, to generate a score indicating the likelihood that the message should have an attachment, and if the score is greater than a predetermined score, then providing the suggestion.