What's the best way to attach an open Word document to an open Outlook email?

May 22, 2012 7:05 AM

Using Windows Vista at work: Once I finish making changes to a file in Microsoft Word 2007, I want to attach the file to an email in Outlook 2007. Currently, I am opening subfolder after subfolder getting to it either on the desktop or in the attach file dialog in Outlook, but that's annoying. Please advise.

Microsoft Word Button->Send->E-Mail is not the answer because it starts a new message in Outlook, and I often want to attach the file to a reply or to a message I've already started. Does Word have something like a "locate file on disc" option? Then I could easily drag it to my message in Outlook. Or maybe there is a way to "Copy as Path" from within Word? Then I could paste the file location into Outlook.

posted by Sock Ray Blue to computers & internet (6 answers total)

This is for Word 2003, but I think it will work in 2007 also. If you add the "Web" toolbar it includes the file address in the toolbar and you can copy/paste from there. You may need to enclose the address in < > if it includes spaces, or you can just paste it into an explorer window.
posted by doctord at 7:39 AM on May 22, 2012

That's not a bad start. Word 2007 does not have the Web toolbar, but the Location box shows up if you go to Microsoft Word Button->Prepare->Document Properties. And it's pretty easy to add Document Properties to the Quick Access Toolbar to make copying the file location to the clipboard not too hard.

Surely, it would be pretty easy for someone who knew what they were doing to write a macro to copy the file location to the clipboard.
posted by Sock Ray Blue at 8:04 AM on May 22, 2012

If you click on the Office button, you will see a "Save and Send" or "Send" option (I'm basing this off Office 2010, but they should be the same). You can then email the file as an attachment straight.
posted by titantoppler at 8:17 AM on May 22, 2012

You can add the same path box to the Quick Access Toolbar in Word 2007. Right-click the toolbar and choose Customize. Set the category to All Commands, find and click on the item named Document Location, and click the Add button. (source)

(Thanks for asking this! Now can anybody solve this same problem for PDFs in Acrobat?)
posted by misterbrandt at 9:30 AM on May 22, 2012

Here's a macro that would do it:

Sub ShowDocInExplorerPony()

Dim Fullpath As String
Dim CmdLine As String

Fullpath = ActiveDocument.FullName
CmdLine = "EXPLORER.exe /select," + Chr$(34) + Fullpath + Chr$(34)
Shell CmdLine, vbNormalFocus

End Sub

Alternatively you could just do File|Save As, then drag it from the save as window into your email. I tend to use File|Save As then just copy the path out of the top of the dialog when I want to get to something that's buried.
posted by samj at 9:42 AM on May 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

Samj, that macro is EXACTLY what I wanted. Thank you!

And using Save As that way is a pretty good trick that I was not aware of.
posted by Sock Ray Blue at 10:01 AM on May 22, 2012