Currently, the Appeal Record in the web view of NXT is not available until a gift is made to the Appeal. This is inconvenient. The ability to attach the appeal's letter to the record is a great feature in the web view. For years I have wanted to attach appeal letters to the record. It makes more sense to add an attachment when the Appeal Record is created & other relevant info is being entered, e.g. No. Solicited, Goal, etc. It will be difficult to remember to go back to each Appeal Record after the first gift is made & add the attachment. Additionally, sometimes the Appeal is the best solution for a letter that isn't a direct ask & will not likely receive a gift. In the current situation, an Attachment can't ever be added to the Appeal Record if a gift isn't made to the Appeal.
My workaround to this is to make sure the appeal is associated with a campaign (if it is a solicitation, it always is anyway). I'm able to navigate to the Appeal Record through the associated Campaign Record & add Attachments.
A temporary workaround may be to record a $0 Gift on a Dummy Record. Then when you get the first "real" gift, delete the dummy one.