Add Send Email Attachment with to context menu

I have added a “send attachment” entry to my right-click context menu when I perform that action on files. Adding attachments to emails was always sort of a burden for me because it was really uncomfortable to open the mail program, click on the attachment button and browse to the file on the hard drive of the computer. A far better way is to right-click the file and select an entry that would automatically open the email program. All that was left to do from this point on was to fill out the email address and write the mail.

I only found information to add the “send attachment” entry to the right-click menu for Thunderbird and Outlook. Both require almost the same steps only the command that is used will be different. Open the registry by pressing Windows + R, typing regedit and hitting enter. Navigate to the key Hkey_Classes_Root \ * \ shell. If the shell entry is not there create it by right-clicking on * and selecting New > Key from the menu and name it shell.

Now create another key in the shell key and name it any way you like. This will be shown in the right-click menu so choose something like “send attachment” for instance. Create another key in the newly created key “send attachment” and name it “Command”.

Right-click on the Default entry in the right pane of Command and right-click it. Select modify from the menu and add the following entry if you want to send attachments to Outlook: "Path to Outlook.exe" /a "%1"

If you want to send attachments with Thunderbird change the default value to: "Path to Thunderbird.exe" -compose attachment="file://%1". My command looks like the following to give you an impression "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\Thunderbird.exe" -compose attachment="file://%1"

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Monday May 7, 2007 -
Tags:attachment context menu, mail tips, outlook, send attachment, thunderbird

Responses so far:

1. SysstemLord says:

   May 7, 2007 at 11:34 pm

   That’s useful, but there is already something similar in windows, you can right click on the file and select “send to”–>”Mail Recipient”
   And it will attach the file in your default mail program.

   Reply
2. me says:

   November 5, 2008 at 10:16 am

   This is good only for single file
   with multiple files it will bring many instances of thunderbird compose.

   Reply
3. Paul K says:

   June 23, 2009 at 11:58 pm

   I tried this.

   Nothing changed.

   It did not add a “send to email” option to my context menu. Any ideas?

   Win2000.

   Reply