Emailing multiple PDFs from Bookends

[kodiak71]

Jon suggested throwing out a post to see if any other users are having this same problem.

Here's the deal:

I would like to email several references WITH the PDFs as well. For example, I select five references, right click on email, and Mac Mail opens but only the text references are listed and not the PDFs. I have tried this on both my home desktop and laptop and I get the same problem. Anyone else having the same problem? As per Jon's suggestions, I have changed the default email client to something else and then back to Mail (because this feature will only work with Mail). That hasn't worked. I tried creating a smaller database (I keep one database with about 3000 references in it) with only 10 references but I still was not able to do it. Any suggestions?

I'm running a MacBook Pro OS X 10.5.6; Mac Mail 3.5; and Bookends 10.5. Oh yeah, this doesn't work on my desktop computer at home either.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I just hired a post-doc and would like to get ~ 87 references to him, but I don't want to email them all separately and Bookends doesn't file them according to smart folders and there isn't a way to export all the PDFs from a smart folder currently (...although I did hint to Jon that that would be a nice feature).

Thanks ahead of time!

Darin

[AsafKeller]

Works for me, from a database with >12K references.

[kodiak71]

No need to rub it in - I'm quite frustrated here.

Anyone else out there had this problem?

Thanks.

Darin

[ozean]

I am having the same problem as kodiak71 – even with a freshly rebuilt database. Same software / OS versions. (System language is set to English, no system tweaks installed.)

[Jon]

If Mail is set as your default email client this should work (in one case the user had to *reset* it to Mail, even though it already was showing as the default). You can send me the preferences file that contains this info and I'll see if it's set correctly for you. It is

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist

Jon
Sonny Software

[kodiak71]

Jon -

I don't have this plist under my Library folder...LaunchServices.plist doesn't appear

[Jon]

It should be in your Preferences folder (in Library). You can't Spotlight for files in the Apple directories.

Jon
Sonny Software

[kodiak71]

It's not there. Here's a screen shot of my LIBRARY - PREFERENCES - (oops - the file is more than 256kb, I'll send it to you by email)

Darin

[ozean]

Ok, I checked the .plist and found no entry for Mail at all. The only entry related to e-mails in general was for some Entourage mailbox stuff. Since I do not use Entourage I deleted that key.

Then I went into Mails preferences, set the default e-mail client to Thunderbird (which I sometimes use for accessing my mail accounts through IMAP), shut down Mail, fired up Mail again, set the default e-mail client to Mail, and then restarted my Mac for good measure and to adhere to established computer voodoo practices.

[Jon]

And? Did that .plist appear after invoking those spells? That's where Bookends looks for the identity of the default email client. If you don't have such a file, Bookends won't know that Mail is your default email client.

Jon
Sonny Software

[ozean]

In my case, the .plist file was always there (and I wonder if kodiak71 maybe looked in the wrong library, i.e. the root library instead of the library in the home folder?), but the key for the mailto protocal was missing. Now, it is there

[Jon]

Ah, very good. Sorry to be concrete, but now Bookends sends the attachment to Mail correctly?

Jon
Sonny Software

[ozean]

ah, yes, sorry: it does! It did send the bibliographic information even before, but now it also attaches the attachement

[Jon]

In the next Bookends update I'm going to loosen the stringency of the test for e-mail client preference. If no e-mail client has been expressly selected by the user, Bookends will assume it is Apple Mail. I think this will avoid the issue we are seeing with system preferences not explicitly being set to Mail.

Jon
Sonny Software

[kodiak71]

Jon,

Ozean was spot on - I was indeed looking in the incorrect Library folder. Attached is the plist (zipped) if you have time to look at it. Thank you for the websites to check out regarding this issue with plist. Greatly appreciate all of your, and Ozean!'s, help.

Big D!