Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the 'Attach a document to a message in Mail by dragging its proxy icon' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
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.



[ Reply to This | # ]
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



[ Reply to This | # ]
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.



[ Reply to This | # ]