A Better "Send to Mail Recipient" With Outlook

Published: 2009-01-03

Sometimes when sending files through email, you want to be able to simply right-click on the file and select Send to mail recipient form the context menu. If you are an Outlook 2003 or 2007 user, you might have noticed that when you do this, Outlook generates a plain text email with your files attached.

While a plain text email is ok, and probably the way all email should be, most of us have been spoiled with html email that allows fancy formatting and we want to keep this functionality when we right-click to send attachments. With this nice formatting ability we also have the added bonus that our signatures get automatically appended to the end of the e-mail.

Below are a few steps to create a new Send To Mail Recipient context menu shortcut that address these issues:

  1. Right-Click the START button and select Explore

  2. Select the Send To folder from the folder list on the left.

    Vista Users: The Send To folder is located under: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo Everything else should work the same. 3. Right-Click anywhere in the white space to the right and select New, then Shortcut 4. In the Type the location of the item: box, type in the following lines based on the version of Outlook you are using

    Outlook 2003: "C:Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE" /c ipm.note

    Outlook 2007: "C:Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /a 5. In the Type a name for this shortcut: box type in: Outlook Mail Recipient 6. Now when you right click on items to send as attachments you will have a new option. By selecting Outlook Mail Recipient you will get your new email in the default email format you have selected in Outlook and, if you have configured your signature for a new email, you will have it as well.

UPDATE: 02/10/2009 - It look like this method won't work when selecting multiple files. For a possible workaround try the following:

Create a file sendto.js with the following code and save it somewhere on your system. For this example the file is saved to c:\sendto.js. 

try
{
    var args = WScript.Arguments;
    var outlookApp = new ActiveXObject("Outlook.Application");
    var nameSpace = outlookApp.getNameSpace("MAPI");
    var mailFolder = nameSpace.getDefaultFolder(6);
    var mailItem = mailFolder.Items.add('IPM.Note.FormA');

    with(mailItem)
    {
        Subject="Sending Files";

        for (var i = 0; i < args.length; i++)
        {
            Attachments.Add(args(i));
        }

        Display(0);
    }
}
catch(err){

}
finally
{
    outlookApp = null;
}

Follow the steps in the tutorial above, but in step 4 type this in the box instead: %windir%\system32\wscript.exe "C:\sendto.js"

Note: Use the "Change Icon" button on the same screen to manually change the icon and use the icons in the Outlook.exe file, otherwise you will get the wscript.exe icon.

Vista: To get to the Send To folder, you'll need to open up an Explorer window, and then paste the following into the address bar: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo