Contract Worker - Freelancing Experiences

How to Protect the Work You Send to Clients

by Rico on June 5th, 2008

This happened during my day job, but it’s a lesson that freelancers will find useful. I had to send a text spreadsheet to my boss. A few hours later, while I was still out, I had to resend the file. My boss received scrambled data, useless junk.

It seems that the our corporate mail system, Outlook Web Access, screws up certain kinds of files. So to prevent that from happening, I zipped the data and resent it. No further problems were encountered.

By placing the data in a ZIP file, I protected its integrity, and made sure that what was received was really what I sent:

1. The same concept applies to files you might send to clients; you also make sure that your client receives what you intended to send.
2. Another obvious benefit of submitting your work through ZIP files is that you compress the data, making it easier to send as an email attachment.
3. On top of that, you combine all the project files into one package, which makes it easier for the client to manage.

Both Windows (XP and Vista) and Mac OS X zip files out of the box. Check out the following:

• Zipping files in Mac OS X
• Zipping files in Windows

If those instructions don’t work for you, you can download WinRAR, which can also create ZIP files.

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POSTED IN: Useful Tools