How to Save the Formatting When Emailing a Word Document

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Microsoft Word is a word processing program that contains an array of utilities and tools for creating letters, memos and other documents including documents with multiple pages, embedded tables and charts. These documents can be emailed to others using your computer's email application. When sending Word documents, you want to maintain the document's formatting so your email recipient will see the document as you see it. This can be done by saving the document as a Web page and attaching it to your email.

Saving the Word Document

Open Microsoft Word.

Click "File," select "Open" and double-click on the Word document you want to email.

Click "File" and select the "Save As" option. Click the "Save as type" drop-down menu and select "Web Page (.htm; .html)." The Web Page option converts the document into an HTML file that preserves its formatting.

Enter a name for your document in the File Name field. Click "Save."

Sending the Email

Click "File" and select "Send To," if the person you want to send the document to can accept email attachments. If your email recipient cannot receive or doesn't like attachments, skip to Step 3.

Select "Mail Recipient (as Attachment)." Your computer's email application will open and the Web page document will appear as an attachment. Skip to Step 6.

If your email recipient will not accept attachments, click "Edit," and choose "Select All" to select the contents of your Word document. Click "Edit" and select "Copy."

Open your computer's email application.

Create a new email message. Click in the body of the email. Press "Ctrl-V" to paste the contents of your document into the new email. The formatting will also copy since it is an HTML document.

Enter the recipient's email address in the To field. Enter a subject for the email in the Subject field. Click "Send" to send the email.