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Paul Sawers

Paul Sawers was a reporter with The Next Web in various roles from May 2011 to November 2014. Follow Paul on Twitter: @psawers or check h (show all) Paul Sawers was a reporter with The Next Web in various roles from May 2011 to November 2014. Follow Paul on Twitter: @psawers or check him out on Google+.

Good news Gmail users, Google has just announced that you now no longer have to download email attachments to view them. With today’s update, you can peruse and save files directly through Google Drive without leaving Gmail, which essentially gives you access to said attachments on multiple devices – not just the one where it has been saved locally.

But over and above this, now when you open an email that contains attachments, you’ll see previews of the contents at the bottom. And when you click on one of these snapshots, a full-screen view will appear, which will let you read, or search for a particular word or comment.

If, however, you do want to save it for full access at a later point, you can save them directly to your Google Drive account by hitting the button that appears when you roll your cursor over the preview image. Or you can simply download as usual to your desktop.