Having problems with attachments and Mail

I stopped using Thunderbird and switched to Mail entirely after I moved from Windows to Mac. Everything looks and works great. The only thing I am having problems is the "attachments" with the Mail software. All I want is just to add a file to a message. However, Mail puts everything inline with the text, tries to create preview of the pdf in the message (which doesn't work with complex pdf files that require "full" Acrobat), etc etc. For instance, today I had to send a pdf file before a 5:00PM deadline. It was around 4:55, I added the pdf to the message, and what I got was "Please wait while we generate the preview for your attachment" inline with the text. It didn't allow me to send the message, neither I wanted to send it without making sure that the attachment was added. It was stuck at that stage for about 30 seconds. Long story short, I sent it using Thunderbird and made it before the deadline. This may work great with inserting pictures into messages, but in situations like this, it doesn't...

Is there a way to have the attachments in an "attachment" box (similar to Thunderbird) without all the hoopla? In addition, my replies and forwards are sent as an attachment, even though I chose to include it in the main body of the message. Am I missing a setting somewhere?

Thanks in advance!

 

Just realized that any text that is below the cursor point where the attachment was inserted is put into a text file and sent as an accompanying .txt attachment. If I point the cursor to the very end of the text, a second .txt file is still generated, but it's empty. Why is this necessary?

 

I haven't found a way to default it to icons.. but when you do attach something you can right click it and hit "View as Icon" to switch it... but when I try complicated files, even some .pdfs that have entry blanks and other things, it is automatically making some icons for me, and others it shows directly and I have to click and tell it to show as an icon..... not sure what it uses to determine what it should do by default, and why we don't have an option in preferences.

as for text attachments, I haven't seen that problem at all... so i dunno

 

Thanks for the reply. After a bit of research, this looks promising. I'll test it out:
http://lokiware.info/Mail-Attachments-Iconizer