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Nathaniel M. Beaver
Asked: 2015-12-29 20:40:53 +0800 CST

Can I drag and drop from Evince to Thunderbird?

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Sometimes I want to attach a PDF to an email in Thunderbird. I can drag and drop from Nautilus to Thunderbird, but if I already have the PDF open in Evince, it's nice not to have to hunt down its location.

Currently I am using "Open Containing Folder" and then dragging and dropping the PDF from Nautilus to Thunderbird, but I'd prefer to skip the additional steps and just use Evince directly.

Can this be done?

I am using Ubuntu 18.04, which comes with Evince version 3.28.4.

18.04

3 Answers

  1. In the options menu in the upper right of the evince window, click on the 'share' symbol (the third one in the row):

    enter image description here

    This opens an empty mail window with the pdf as attachment. From there you either write your mail or you can drag and drop the attachment from one mail window to the other.

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  2. Try File->Save-As from Evince. That will open a dialog that offers to save the PDF with the same filename but instead of going through with the save, just copy the full path to your clipboard (or select the PDF in the save-as dialog and ctl-c to copy). Note that even if you copy a file, it will paste as a path in a text input field. Now in Thunderbird, when you add an attachment, just past the full path of the PDF that you have in your clipboard. Done.

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  3. Best Answer

    In short, no, there is no direct possibility to add a PDF file viewed in Evince as an attachment to an already composed mail in Thunderbird (or other email client). This would need to be implemented in Evince.

    Still, there are shortcuts that eliminate the need to manually hunt down the PDF that is already open in your folder tree in a file manager or in a file dialog.

    • The most direct way is the one you use now: use the menu option "Open in containing folder". The file manager is opened with the file highlighted. From here, you can
      • with the mouse: drag into Thunderbird
      • with the keyboard, hit Ctrl+c to copy the path, and in the attach dialog in thunderbird or any other , Ctrl+L and then Ctrl+v to paste the path.
    • The suggestion of Muclux, where you use the "Share" function is the shortest possible approach if you want to create a mail with the PDF attached. However, also here it takes extra steps to attach the PDF to an already composed mail. In Thunderbird, you can drag the PDF from the empty message Evince created to another already composed message. This may not work with other email clients or with web mail.
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