Please Find Attached or Please Find Enclosed? What is the Difference?

When you are making your way into the professional job market, you will start sending resumes and applications. Sometimes you will send your resume in the mail, but it is most common to send your resume in an email.

When you are letting the company know that you have sent them your resume, it is extremely important to make sure you are using the right phrase. If you use the wrong phrase, it can quickly cost you the job. Companies are interested in people with great grammar skills.

Please Find Attached

If you are sending an email with an attachment, proper grammar will be to say “please find attached”. It is even becoming popular to ignore this phrase completely, with other phrases making more sense. 2Please find attached” is a wordy phrase and is considered to be redundant.

When it comes to grammar, please find attached is not incorrect. The phrase is considered redundant because you are saying something is attached and then directing them to find what has been attached.

Examples
Please find attached the report you asked me for.

Please find attached the budget report for this quarter.

Please find attached my resume for consideration.

Please Find Enclosed

If you are sending something in the mail with an envelope, you would use the phrase please find enclosed. This is because the resume or attachment that you are sending is inside the envelope, not attached to it. This is also how you would refer to a payment sent in the mail.

Say you pay your rent by check every month. When you send the check to your landlord, you will usually send a note along with it. In the note, you would tell the landlord to find your payment enclosed.

It will also be common to see this phrase used when you are sent bills. For example, please find enclosed this month’s electric bill.

Examples
Please find enclosed the payment for this month’s rent.

Please find enclosed this month’s cell phone bill.

Please find enclosed my resume and application for consideration.

Please Find Attached or Please Find Enclosed?

It is pretty easy to know when to use each phrase. If you are sending a document by email, you will say please find attached. This is because you are attaching the document to the email.

If you are sending a document by mail, you will use please find enclosed. This is because you are putting the document in an envelope. To remember this, keep in mind that you CLOSE the ENvelope before you put it in the mail.

Find Attached or See Attached?

There are some people who think writing “see attached” is the best way to bring attention to a document in an email. They believe that saying find attached is referring to them searching in the email communication for the document, not that it is attached to the current email. “See attached” is considered informal, but still acceptable.

Please Find The Attachment

“Please Find the Attachment” is incorrect and doesn’t really make sense in English. You should say “Please find the report attached”. “Attachment” is the noun so you need to use the noun correctly.

Examples:

The attachment includes a report on your behavior.

You’ll find the attachment below.

Are These Phrases Necessary?

It is quickly becoming less common to use these phrases. There are several alternatives that might be appreciated even more than these professional-seeming phrases. You can easily just attach a document without any additional explanation. You can also just say that you’ve attached or included the document.

It is possible to say things such as the attached shows, the attached contains, I have attached, we have enclosed, and several other phrases. These are much simpler and still considered to be professional. They are also safer if you aren’t sure which phrase you are supposed to use.

Alternatives to Please Find Attached and Please Find Enclosed

Here are some examples that provide less formal alternatives to Please find attached and Please find enclosed:

You can find the photo attached.

Check out the attachment to see the revenue growth.
As promised, I have attached the report.
There is an attachment below with everything you need to know.

The attachment includes a file that you can download.
All the documents needed are attached to this email.
Take a look at the attachment and tell me what you think.

Author

Recent Posts

Conor

Conor is the main writer here at One Minute English and was an English teacher for 10 years. He is interested in helping people with their English skills and learning about using A.I tools at work.