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Attach a document to a message in Mail by dragging its proxy icon Apps
If you're working on a document and you want to send it to a friend/colleague as an email attachment, you probably know that you can drag the actual file icon to the Mail icon in the Dock to create a new message containing that file. But to do this, you have to navigate to the Finder and find the file.

Another way to do this is to save your work, click the proxy icon in the title bar (the small icon next to the file's name) and drag it onto the Mail icon in the dock. This creates a new message with the working document attached to the message.

Make sure you save the current document; otherwise the icon in the window title is dimmed and cannot be moved.

You can do this with web pages in Safari or Firefox (and perhaps in other browsers) by dragging the icon to the left of the URL in the address bar; in this case, the current URL is pasted in the body of the newly created message. If, however, you are viewing a local file, it's that file itself that will be added to the message.

Note that any changes you make to your file after adding it to a new message will not be reflected in that attachment; the file is added to the message in its state at the time you drag it.
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Attach a document to a message in Mail by dragging its proxy icon | 6 comments | Create New Account
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Attach a document to a message in Mail by dragging its proxy icon
Authored by: jctull on Oct 30, '06 08:23:06AM

This is quite handy and something I never thought to try out on my own. Instead, I would always waste time looking in the Services folder to find that there was no option there. In MS Office products, there is a menu command to send a file as an attachment, but this method is excellent. It also forces you to make certain you have saved the document before you try to attach it.



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Attach a document to a message in Mail by dragging its proxy icon
Authored by: osxpounder on Oct 30, '06 09:55:16AM

I'm not one of those folks who likes to say, "this is something you should have known, and doesn't belong in a hint", though, in this case, the method you describe [dragging an icon from a title bar] is fairly old-school. It's a tip that's sure to help many Mac users who never realized they could drag an icon from a title bar in order to, for examples: copy a file, attach a file to a Mail message, or open a file in another app. I take it for granted that I can drag an icon from Preview's title bar down to the Photoshop icon in the dock, and Photoshop will open that image.

This bit was news to me: "Note that any changes you make to your file after adding it to a new message will not be reflected in that attachment; the file is added to the message in its state at the time you drag it." I was surprised to see this. I had hoped that Mail would send the actual file, rather than making a copy, and I think I relied on this assumption without testing it first. Thanks for pointing it out!

Dragging icons from title bars can be quite useful, but sometimes not as predictable as I'd like [I think behavior should precisely match that of dragging an icon in Finder windows]. I found that, once I started to drag, if I held down CMD, the Mac would not MOVE the file, as it does when you hold down CMD before dropping a file in Finder. That was disappointing.



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Attach a document to a message in Mail by dragging its proxy icon
Authored by: kirkmc on Oct 30, '06 10:43:36AM

No matter how you add an attachment to Mail, it will not record changes made afterwards. Mail adds it to the actual message - it does not simply store a pointer to the original file.

Kirk

---
Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more



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Attach a document to a message in Mail by dragging its proxy icon
Authored by: geordie on Oct 30, '06 03:18:28PM

Entourage on the other hand does not do the attaching and encoding until you save the email (or save it by sending it). I use this all the time to reply to an email with a Word document that needs comments. Just double click on the attachment to open it and then add some comments to the document and then drag it back to my reply email. If as I am writing the email part I realize I need to make one additional change to the Word document before I send the reply I can do so without having to remove and reattach the file.

Of course I am an obsessive Command S every minute kind of guy so most of the time I have already saved my outgoing email in my drafts folder before I realize that I wanted to change the Word document. Still the drag it to reattach the file is pretty convenient even if I have to remove the old attachment first.



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Attach a document to a message in Mail by dragging its proxy icon
Authored by: robleach on Oct 30, '06 10:56:53AM

You should note that dragging the icon from a title bar can be a little tricky. Sometimes it will take me a few tries before it actually drags the icon. It seems to me that the position you click on the icon must be dead center (like the middle couple columns of pixels). Otherwise, it drags the window. Why can't the whole icon work for dragging?



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Attach a document to a message in Mail by dragging its proxy icon
Authored by: osxpounder on Nov 02, '06 09:59:13AM

I think the trick is just to hold down on the icon for about a second, maybe 2 seconds, before dragging. That works consistently for me.



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