David Chartier at The Unofficial Apple Weblog took one look at a recent macOSXHints tip about emailing files quickly with Finder’s Folder Actions, and decided it was way too much work to set up.

Instead he developed an Automator Action to do the same job.

When you have configured, it does the same job as the Folder Action, and can be placed as a droplet in the Dock or added to the Finder’s Contextual menu.

It’s available with some instructions on the TUAW web site .

Alternatively, you could look at the bundle of three Automator Actions that make up Desktop Mailer on the Automator.us site.

This Collection of Autmator Actions was featured on Hawk Wings way back in the olden days.

It provides workflows to create a new message containing the selected file, another to send the file off automatically to a predetermined email address or a final one that archives the file(s) first.

Whichever way you go, this is a time-saver for anyone who frequently emails files.

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Sooner or later, all Mail.app users who have any kind of email communication with Outlook users will get a message containing the dreaded unopenable winmail.dat file.

TNEF is a utility that extracts the files buried inside. It can really save your bacon.

Now a developer has wrapped the utility into a mail.app bundle which automatically recognises incoming emails with winmail.dat attachments.

When they arrive, it either opens iCal if the embedded file is an Outlook appointment or prompts you to save the embedded files in a folder of your choice:

I don’t get enough email from Outlook users to need it. Firing up TNEF’s Enough app on the odd occasion is all I need.

If you get a lot of this kind of email, the plugin takes out some extra steps and might be worth the shareware price.

OMiC is shareware (5 euros = USD 6.30) and is available from the developer’s web site . He hopes to make some money from the plugin for his compulsory military service, which begins soon.

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Email Backup, a simple and easy-to-use email backup utility that I posted about just last week, has been updated, adding support for Thunderbird and Eudora.

The app can now do backups for all the major Mac email clients, which can be selected from the main interface:

It’s not an ideal solution. Restoring one of its backups has to be done manually. It doesn’t back up some of the things that I think are essential for Mail.app.

But it’s a lot better than nothing. And it’s free.

Email Backup is available from the developer’s web site .

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Email backup is a simple, easy-to-use app that offers dedicated email backup for Apple Mail and Entourage v.X and 2004.

It backs up all the files needed to restore your email in the event of a corruption or some other disaster.

The single-paned interface allows you to specify the backup destination and options to schedule the day and time:

A revised version released today adds an option to turn verbose logging on and off, fixes a rare freezing issue that occurred on some systems and adds a progress indicator for manual backups.

Of course, there are many options for creating a regular backup regime. Hawk Wings has posted about many of them—BackityMac, Synk, applescripts, Dejà vu, although there are others.

UPDATE: As Steve points out in the comments, this app only backs up your preferences file and the essential files and folders in your ~/Library/Mail folder. If you want to back up any saved or modified attachments or your Address Book (which I think is part of any sensible Mail backup) you will need to find another method to include all the files needed for a full backup (listed in an earlier Hawk Wings post).

Email Backup is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .

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The Automator web site contains a treasure trove of actions and tutorials on harnessing the power of Mac OS ’s X Automator.

Some of these actions work with Mail.app to automate it and help you get things done more quickly.

Desktop Mailer offers three Automator actions to speed up the emailing of files.

Following the step-by-step tutorials creates three actions that can be added to Finder’s Contextual Menu, allowing you to add a selected item to a new mail message, to archive selected items in a zip file and email them or to just add selected items to an email:

Of course, you can do some of these things with Quicksilver or simply by dropping the files onto Mails Dock icon, but this way may suit some people better.

Another workflow automatically adds photos in emails from particular senders to a project in your Aperture library.

The iWeb Action Pack adds five Automator actions to iWeb, including one that will automatically extract images from cell phone messages sent to your email account and add them to your iWeb blog.

[Thanks, Nyhthawk, for the tip]

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ChibiNinja is a utility that creates a cross-platform encrypted multi-language email message with an inserted image. You can send and receive them using from Apple Mail (or Outlook Express on Windows) without complicated encryption mail settings.

An updated version, released today, adds support for encrypted files and the option to request a read receipt. The developer has created a detailed explanation of the app’s new features.

Once donation-ware, ChibiNinja Mail is now shareware (USD 18), although the developer has now released a freeware version that will decrypt and encrypt a message and an image but not files.

You can get them both from the developer’s web site.

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