Vista Send to... (mail recipient)

[Doug]

I should know better, but I make the same mistake again and again when I am
absorbed in my work. I right-click on the document I want to Send to/Mail
Mail Recipient, and find that what I had selected was NOT the document, just
a LINK to the document.

Is there any way of activating a user option to chose, at that moment,
between the link and the underlying document? Vista has plenty of
exasperating UAC serial popup messages (eg five clicks just to do a Disk
Cleanup), but a warning/option in this case would be welcome. Perhaps this
feature is available and I just need to enable it?

Doug

 

[Gordon]

I should know better, but I make the same mistake again and again when I am
absorbed in my work. I right-click on the document I want to Send to/Mail
Mail Recipient, and find that what I had selected was NOT the document,
just a LINK to the document.

Is there any way of activating a user option to chose, at that moment,
between the link and the underlying document? Vista has plenty of
exasperating UAC serial popup messages (eg five clicks just to do a Disk
Cleanup), but a warning/option in this case would be welcome. Perhaps this
feature is available and I just need to enable it?

Doug

No there isn't - How would Vista know that you wanted to send a document
instead of a link?

 

[Mick Murphy]

I do onsite computer training, lol.

 

[Doug]

No there isn't - How would Vista know that you wanted to send a document
instead of a link?

Umm - because sending a local link to a remote recipient is very likely to
be pointless, and thus almost certainly a user error, or at least something
the user would like to be able to review. And there is the Vista precedent
that when one tries to delete a link to an executable, a warning comes up
that this will not uninstall the executable, just delete the link to it.

 

[Doug]

Thanks, Mick!

I do onsite computer training, lol.

 

[Gordon]

Umm - because sending a local link to a remote recipient is very likely to
be pointless,

And again, how would an Operating System, which is inherently lifeless and
unintelligent, know this? The data you are asking it to send is, according
to the OS, just a lot of zeros and ones.....

 

[Charlie Tame]

And again, how would an Operating System, which is inherently lifeless
and unintelligent, know this? The data you are asking it to send is,
according to the OS, just a lot of zeros and ones.....

Didn't read earlier posts but how about a change of habit. Use the menu
item for "Insert" or "Attach" and then find the document. (Assuming the
mail client has them). Doesn't matter what client is in use, or Windows
/ Linux versions, the problem the OP describes is possible.

 

[Andrew Murray]

Strange, but when I do the same thing, and Outlook opens, with the file I
right-clicked/Send to Mail Recipient as an Attachment like it should do.

It could have something to do with the email client you're using.....which
is it that you use?

Outlook/Mail/Live Mail or something else like Thunderbird?

 

[Gordon]

Didn't read earlier posts but how about a change of habit. Use the menu
item for "Insert" or "Attach" and then find the document. (Assuming the
mail client has them). Doesn't matter what client is in use, or Windows /
Linux versions, the problem the OP describes is possible.

I agree the problem is a real one - but it's a USER problem not an OS one -
how would the OS (or mail client) possibly know that the OP wants to attach
a document instead of a link?
Does your car know whether you want to pick up a passenger, or take garbage
to the dump?

 

[Charlie Tame]

I agree the problem is a real one - but it's a USER problem not an OS
one - how would the OS (or mail client) possibly know that the OP wants
to attach a document instead of a link?
Does your car know whether you want to pick up a passenger, or take
garbage to the dump?

Sure, I wasn't arguing either way. Actually I got into the habit of
always doing it manually because install of Linux I had at the time
refused to accept my default setting of Thunderbird and wanted to use
another client. I use Thunderbird because it looks the same and works
the same under Windows or Linux, previously I used OE. Because I use a
number of different machines I don't use something like Outlook because
it's not available on all of them, although it is more powerful and
professional if you need that kind of thing,

But on seeing the post here it occurred to me that this also solved my
"Link" problem, and it seems like more work for a start but then it
removes that "Dammit" moment just after you hit "Send".

 

[Doug]

Thanks, Andrew

My email client is Windows Mail.

To clarify (I expressed it badly in my original post and may have misled
you), I click on a shortcut to a document, select Send to/Mail Recipient and
what ends up attached to the resultant Windows Mail message is the LNK file
(perhaps 1kb) and not the file (JPG, DOC, PDF or whatever, but seldom less
than 30kb) to which the LNK file is pointing. Are you really saying that
your Outlook installation automatically perceives that, in selecting the
shortcut, you had intended to send the underlying document? If so that is
what I would like Windows Mail to do for me.

 

[Doug]

And again, how would an Operating System, which is inherently lifeless and
unintelligent, know this? The data you are asking it to send is, according
to the OS, just a lot of zeros and ones.....

Because it is a LNK file. Yes, the OS being inherently lifeless and
unintelligent, but even so, Vista is programmed to intervene "intelligently"
with all sorts of error messages, and trying to attach a LNK file whose
properties show that it is pointing to a local document file (rather than a
remote web site) is a daft thing for me to be doing, so if the OS (or the
email client) could just ask "Link or Document?", then I would click
"Document".

 

[Andrew Murray]

"Shortcut" is the operative word here. Apparently your email program won't
send the shortcut (I tried it and all I get is in the body of the message
the path to the actual associated file) as an attachment because it is only
a link to the actual file.

Therefore you need to right click the actual file then do the Send to Mail
Recipient thing - it doesn't work with shortcuts.

 

[Gordon]

Thanks, Andrew

My email client is Windows Mail.

To clarify (I expressed it badly in my original post and may have misled
you), I click on a shortcut to a document, select Send to/Mail Recipient
and what ends up attached to the resultant Windows Mail message is the LNK
file (perhaps 1kb) and not the file (JPG, DOC, PDF or whatever, but seldom
less than 30kb) to which the LNK file is pointing.

What did you expect? Of course if you deliberately clicked on a SHORTCUT
instead of the actual file, that's what the email client (any email client)
would put into the attachment field. The client doesn't know that what you
REALLY want to do is to send the document, not the shortcut, all the client
knows is that you want to send whatever file you clicked on, as an
attachment. As I keep saying, computers aren't intuitive, they don't think
for you.

 

[Nonny]

Because it is a LNK file. Yes, the OS being inherently lifeless and
unintelligent, but even so, Vista is programmed to intervene "intelligently"
with all sorts of error messages, and trying to attach a LNK file whose
properties show that it is pointing to a local document file (rather than a
remote web site) is a daft thing for me to be doing, so if the OS (or the
email client) could just ask "Link or Document?", then I would click
"Document".

One thing you should keep in mind is that Vista cannot compensate for
the effects of PEBKAC.

 

[Doug]

One thing you should keep in mind is that Vista cannot compensate for
the effects of PEBKAC.

Absolutely!