Quickly email a document in mail.app
Over the weekend I discovered a quick tip for emailing an open document in Mail.app.
Office for Mac apps have a “Send to…” option in their File menu, but many other apps don’t, including the ones that you use everyday.
If you want to email a PDF that you are looking at in Preview or a document you are working on in Mellel 
, all you have to do is drag the small icon in the titlebar onto Mail’s icon in the Dock after holding down the mouse button for a tiny bit while the cursor is over the icon:
A new message appears with the file attached.
It’s even more efficient than using Quicksilver to email a file quickly.
UPDATE: As Adam points out in the comments, this also works with Word and other Office apps, in fact with any app that shows you an icon in the titlebar.
[Thanks, Dan ]
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Tags: Apple Mail, Apple Mail Tips, document, email, file, mail.app, Productivity
November 20th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Why would you have to hold down any keys but the mouse-button while dragging?
November 20th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Erm… how does that differ from the simpler tip of just dragging that proxy icon to Mail’s Dock icon, without holding down any special keys? Wouldn’t that do the same thing?
November 20th, 2006 at 9:01 am
Are you sure you need any keys down at all for this to work?
November 20th, 2006 at 9:09 am
No. In fact, I see that I don’t. Thanks for pointing that out!
November 20th, 2006 at 9:18 am
I think you have to hold down the mouse cursor for a second before you drag the file’s icon, though.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:20 am
Yep, otherwise it just drags the window.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Won’t this work in any app that shows a document proxy icon in the title bar? I do this in Word all the time.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:03 am
What scares me is that you’ve got 3000 unread in NNW. It looks like it’s time to clear some stuff out. Yikes.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Yes, I’m a bit behind with all the marking, kid’s birthdays and what-not.
As you can see from this post, basic fact-checking as taken a bit of a hit as well :(
November 20th, 2006 at 10:12 am
How odd that the three of us who pointed out the key thing are all called David… :-)
November 20th, 2006 at 10:26 am
You can do this with the Finder too. Just drag the proxy icon to the desktop, and it will move the document to the desktop. Drag it to an open folder in the Finder and it moves that document to that folder. Command click on the proxy icon and it will give you a pop-up menu with the document’s path.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:32 am
you can also use the “send selection” option in {appName}->Services->Mail.
November 20th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
From any app that prints press command-P or File/Print then under the PDF pull down menu there is an option to email the PDF document.
This is a really useful tab. There is also a nice option to save the PDF in a receipts folder. This is a great way to save copies of invoices of things purchased.
November 23rd, 2006 at 5:22 am
Great tip.
Luca
November 23rd, 2006 at 8:27 pm
It works with links as well, from Safari, Firefox and Camino :-)