Can Evernote use Outlook to send email

[gsewell 1]

Can Evernote be set up to use Outlook when you want to email a note to someone?

Geoff.

[gazumped 11,667]

AFAIK Evernote can't be set up to use Outlook, but if necessary you can fairly easily use a work-around that someone else posted somewhere here - send the initial EN email to yourself, receive it in your account and then Forward it (with suitable editing) to the intended final recipient. Not elegant, but it works...

[gsewell 1]

thanks, not a bad workaround.

geoff

[GeekDaddy 4]

Resurrecting this topic because I'm running into an issue where this workaround is not going to help. I have private, local-only notebooks which contain proprietary company information for my work, including some customer config and environment info. I can't put this data out there for hte world to see, however I love using Evernote to help me organize my information about these issues, and to help me organize other data that I find which I need to remember, aggregate, rewrite, and/or publish. Again, this is info that can't go outside of our network. I will somewhat frequently need to share these notes with colleagues. Rather than having to cut and paste notes into email to send, I used to be able to just email them back in the EN 2.x and 3.x days. Since upgrading to EN 4.5 (which I otherwise love so far), I can't email notes through my own Outlook client. Instead, they get emailed through the cloud, and arrive as coming from my personal email address rather than my work email, which I use exclusively through Outlook. I found out the hard way the other day that my otherwise secure info is being sent outside my network from a private note.

So, as you can see, sending a note to myself, then attaching it to another email or forwarding that email are not options. Neither is cutting and pasting the note into email. Why can't I just send it via my own preferred mail client anymore? Especially private notes, which I didn't put into shared or synced folders for very good reasons. I want to be able to share my notes via email without having to share them with Evernote's cloud.

-Ben

[heather 604]

You can export the note to .html, then attach it to an Outlook message.

[Metrodon 2,184]

Apparently Evernote now exists on 14 different platforms - so the expectation would be that Evernote integrates with at least 14 (the default) mail clients.....Given that lots of people don't like to use the default mail client, maybe that number rises to 20-25, that's a lot of integration work given how often these clients change for a relatively small benefit. Plus, Evernote loses control of whether an email is sent if using an external client and opens up a small can of support worms.

I can perfectly understand why they choose the current method for email sharing.

[GeekDaddy 4]

Apparently Evernote now exists on 14 different platforms - so the expectation would be that Evernote integrates with at least 14 (the default) mail clients.....Given that lots of people don't like to use the default mail client, maybe that number rises to 20-25, that's a lot of integration work given how often these clients change for a relatively small benefit. Plus, Evernote loses control of whether an email is sent if using an external client and opens up a small can of support worms.

I can perfectly understand why they choose the current method for email sharing.

First off, I'm not sure what you mean by 14 different platforms. I can only presume that you're counting the various Windows OS versions, Mac, and all mobile clients, of which I'm only aware of 5, unless you are similarly counting various versions among those platforms. I'm not concerned with the mobile cilents or browser plugins, as they are irrelevant to this discussion. My focus is only on those application versions which allow local-only notebooks, which to my knowledge include only the Windows and Mac clients. I haven't tried with my iPad, but at least my iPhone client doesn't allow for local-only notebooks. Even without examining the other mobile clients, I think we can take those off the table, as I don't think that any of them support the creation and management of local notebooks.

Specifically with regards to the Windows and Mac installed clients, this hardly has to be a problem. The key is that the OS has a default mail client, as you mentioned, and all that Evernote has to do is to trigger the OS code that sends the email via that client. That's all any applications need to do to trigger an email. It must simply encode the note data as HTML, and trigger the OS default mail client to open a new email with the encoded data as the argument for the message body. Adding support for web-based email such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo mail to the installed clients would be a different story, and quite useful in its own right, but that's not what I'm requesting here, nor is it what the original poster was requesting, I suspect. EN 2.x and 3.x, both of which I have used and liked, were capable of sending email via the native OS mail client, so it's not even as if I'm advocating a NEW feature. Arguably, the lack of the ability for EN 4.x to send email via a local mail client is actually a regression from previous versions, as it is a feature that was deliberately removed.

-Ben

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

First off, I'm not sure what you mean by 14 different platforms. I can only presume that you're counting the various Windows OS versions, Mac, and all mobile clients, of which I'm only aware of 5, unless you are similarly counting various versions among those platforms. I'm not concerned with the mobile cilents or browser plugins, as they are irrelevant to this discussion.

14 clients listed here. And no, they are not irrelevant to this discussion. EN is striving for parity feature across all clients. IOW, they don't want to add things to one or two clients that can't/won't be added to the other clients.

[GeekDaddy 4]

Ah, thanks for the link. I wasn't aware that they differentiated between some of those clients quite that way. Good to know.

My argument, however, was specific to those clients which support local notebooks, which none of the mobile clients do, to my knowledge, and which is kind of pointless in the web clients, full or mobile. If we differentiate this into the largest subdivisions which that post enumerates, desktop, mobile and web, there is going to be very little parity between those groups in terms of certain feature sets. For example, as noted, only desktop supports local notebooks. Even within the much more narrow category of the browser plugins, there are significant differences in features between the Chrome and Firefox plugins, for example. The Firefox plugin allows me to choose between clipping to my installed desktop client or the web, while Chrome will only clip to the web. That said, the feature of emailing notes via the default OS mail client has a significantly less critical use case than it does on the desktop clients, especially when you factor in the existence of local notebooks.

Hope that helps to clarify my point a bit. Thanks for the discussion.

-Ben

[heather 604]

You can export the note to .html, then attach it to an Outlook message.

[GeekDaddy 4]

You can export the note to .html, then attach it to an Outlook message.

That's a really kludgy workaround, especially when compared to what we used to have in prior versions, when the act of emailing the note simply resulted in the outbound message popping up straight away with the contents of the note in the body, so that all I would have to do is address it and send. Instead, you're advocating that I export the email, which then requires me to go back and clean up the exported file on my system after I send the email. Functional? Yes. Scalable? Not really.

Thanks for the reply, but is this really as good as it's going to get? Personally, I would be happy with just having the option in the desktop client to use the default OS mail application, with the default being the cloud email. I'm not saying to ditch the cloud email option, as I can see the draw there. I'd just like to have the choice.

This feature has been asked about on the Mac user forum as well, BTW: http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/20299-request-support-for-external-email-clients/

-Ben

[Metrodon 2,184]

Given that Heather is an Evernote employee, I'd take what she says as being the company line and it seems that the company line is that they will not be supporting native mail clients.

This isn't just a matter of web mail by the way, off the top of my head for Windows there is the built in client, Outlook, Thunderbird, should they support all 3? On OS X, Apple Mail, Entourage/Outlook, Thunderbird, Sparrow etc etc....

[GeekDaddy 4]

...

This isn't just a matter of web mail by the way, off the top of my head for Windows there is the built in client, Outlook, Thunderbird, should they support all 3? On OS X, Apple Mail, Entourage/Outlook, Thunderbird, Sparrow etc etc....

They wouldn't have to. Just calling the OS hooks to trigger the default mail client would be sufficient. No need for any specific mail client support. I'm not talking about support the complete integration of the mail clients, such as some Outlook users are requesting for purposes of using their address books, etc. That is far beyond the scope of what I'm requesting here. Frankly, it could be as simple as exporting the note to HTML and then executing a system() call with a mailto: link, using the HMTL version of the note as the body argument. If that's what we're advocating doing manually, there's no reason it can't be done automatically for the user by the EN client much faster. I'm not sure what language they're using for Evernote, but I found some very quick info via Google for doing this in C++, C#, and Java, among other languages, and without digging, saw some links that indicated I could easily find some info for Cocoa for the Mac version. I won't claim that it's trivial, but they have managed to do it in previous versions. Bringing in and/or updating some of that code could not be so burdensome as all that. Just giving users the non-default option of using the OS default mail client would be a great step.

Insofar as Heather's comments go, and the other threads I've found about this on the forum, nowhere does it explicitly say that they will not be supporting this in future. If that is indeed the company line, then so be it, but I'd rather not assume that unless I see/hear it explicitly stated. I'm giving Evernote the benefit of the doubt here in that this may be a use case that was not considered sufficiently prior to the decision to discontinue support for native email applications in the desktop clients. I would hope that such a use case, sufficiently explored and heard out, may change some minds. They have indicated that they are willing to consider other feature requests mentioned by users so far, and that's all that this is. Being a realist, and understanding a few things about development cycles and feature updates in software projects, I doubt that I would see any change in the 4.x releases, but perhaps in the 5.x release they will reconsider supporting this feature.

-Ben

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

They wouldn't have to. Just calling the OS hooks to trigger the default mail client would be sufficient. No need for any specific mail client support. I'm not talking about support the complete integration of the mail clients, such as some Outlook users are requesting for purposes of using their address books, etc. That is far beyond the scope of what I'm requesting here.

That's your request. But why is your request so different from someone else's who may want to use another client???

Frankly, it could be as simple as exporting the note to HTML and then executing a system() call with a mailto: link, using the HMTL version of the note as the body argument. If that's what we're advocating doing manually, there's no reason it can't be done automatically for the user by the EN client much faster.

It may not be difficult. And it may not be very high on their priority list, if it's on the list at all.

Insofar as Heather's comments go, and the other threads I've found about this on the forum, nowhere does it explicitly say that they will not be supporting this in future. If that is indeed the company line, then so be it, but I'd rather not assume that unless I see/hear it explicitly stated.

Heather has been very specific & clear. She's probably not going to say they will not be supporting this ever. They are only ~4 years into being the 100 year company that is their goal. But I'd take her posts to mean it's not happening any time soon. I think it's safe to say if this is a deal breaker for you that you need to start looking for another app.

[Metrodon 2,184]

...

This isn't just a matter of web mail by the way, off the top of my head for Windows there is the built in client, Outlook, Thunderbird, should they support all 3? On OS X, Apple Mail, Entourage/Outlook, Thunderbird, Sparrow etc etc....

They wouldn't have to. Just calling the OS hooks to trigger the default mail client would be sufficient. No need for any specific mail client support. I'm not talking about support the complete integration of the mail clients, such as some Outlook users are requesting for purposes of using their address books, etc. That is far beyond the scope of what I'm requesting here. Frankly, it could be as simple as exporting the note to HTML and then executing a system() call with a mailto: link, using the HMTL version of the note as the body argument. If that's what we're advocating doing manually, there's no reason it can't be done automatically for the user by the EN client much faster. I'm not sure what language they're using for Evernote, but I found some very quick info via Google for doing this in C++, C#, and Java, among other languages, and without digging, saw some links that indicated I could easily find some info for Cocoa for the Mac version. I won't claim that it's trivial, but they have managed to do it in previous versions. Bringing in and/or updating some of that code could not be so burdensome as all that. Just giving users the non-default option of using the OS default mail client would be a great step.

Insofar as Heather's comments go, and the other threads I've found about this on the forum, nowhere does it explicitly say that they will not be supporting this in future. If that is indeed the company line, then so be it, but I'd rather not assume that unless I see/hear it explicitly stated. I'm giving Evernote the benefit of the doubt here in that this may be a use case that was not considered sufficiently prior to the decision to discontinue support for native email applications in the desktop clients. I would hope that such a use case, sufficiently explored and heard out, may change some minds. They have indicated that they are willing to consider other feature requests mentioned by users so far, and that's all that this is. Being a realist, and understanding a few things about development cycles and feature updates in software projects, I doubt that I would see any change in the 4.x releases, but perhaps in the 5.x release they will reconsider supporting this feature.

-Ben

Wonderful, anyway Evernote have made it clear that they aren't doing it at the moment.

[GeekDaddy 4]

They wouldn't have to. Just calling the OS hooks to trigger the default mail client would be sufficient. No need for any specific mail client support. I'm not talking about support the complete integration of the mail clients, such as some Outlook users are requesting for purposes of using their address books, etc. That is far beyond the scope of what I'm requesting here.

That's your request. But why is your request so different from someone else's who may want to use another client???

I think that's my point. It's no different in that it is an individual feature request, and can and should be evaluated independently of those other requests for potential inclusion.

Frankly, it could be as simple as exporting the note to HTML and then executing a system() call with a mailto: link, using the HMTL version of the note as the body argument. If that's what we're advocating doing manually, there's no reason it can't be done automatically for the user by the EN client much faster.

It may not be difficult. And it may not be very high on their priority list, if it's on the list at all.

Again, this is part of the point. User feedback drives priorities. I'm providing feedback to (hopefully) drive the priority higher for this feature.

Insofar as Heather's comments go, and the other threads I've found about this on the forum, nowhere does it explicitly say that they will not be supporting this in future. If that is indeed the company line, then so be it, but I'd rather not assume that unless I see/hear it explicitly stated.

Heather has been very specific & clear. She's probably not going to say they will not be supporting this ever. They are only ~4 years into being the 100 year company that is their goal. But I'd take her posts to mean it's not happening any time soon. I think it's safe to say if this is a deal breaker for you that you need to start looking for another app.

You may very well be correct in that, and I appreciate that the product is not, nor will it ever be, exactly what every user wants it to be. It's also fairly young as such products go, at least since the 3.x rewrite. If it's not happening soon, fine. At that point, I'd settle for an acknowledgement that they will consider the use case, and evaluate the request for inclusion in a future release. I'm not impatient, and I'm willing to discuss the request if they're willing to hear out this argument for the inclusion of the feature. The point of discussing these things in forums such as this one, I believe, is to help distill the question down to one that can be answered effectively, and make the point either very clearly understood, or else moot because the issue isn't as clear cut as it was initially perceived. So far, I think that I've clearly explained the use case, and shown that I'm not the only user wishing to see such a feature. I'm certainly the most persistent so far, from what I can see. ;-) Nevertheless, if the rationale for this feature request is sound, and it would a) not require excessive rewrites or onerous/dangerous additions to the product, not take the product in a direction significantly outside of its intended development path, and c) serve a compelling use case for at least a portion of the user base which the current feature set leaves unsatisfied (especially given that the requested feature was one that previously existed, and was removed), then it does merit serious consideration.

In the end, I prefer Evernote to other note-taking apps for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it does have the cloud features that allow me to have access to all of my own notes via my PC and my mobile devices without any special configuration or security requirements. I just want to have the option to use the cloud for those things for which it makes sense, and avoid using it for those things which it doesn't. Even worse than being forced to use the cloud is the scenario presented by OneNote: no accessible cloud to use in the first place.

-Ben

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Dude. Seriously. Feel free to discuss this till the cows come home. As for me, I'm done. Nothing more to add to this convo.

[jefito 5,589]

At that point, I'd settle for an acknowledgement that they will consider the use case, and evaluate the request for inclusion in a future release.

Yeah -- the standard disclaimer is that this being a user forum, Evernote folks don't drop in to discuss every point made, or even every topic (though they do sometimes); as nearly as I can tell, they read everything. Information is good, no problems there, though; there's always the chance that they've not considered some particular angle. Obviously they've given the topic some thought.

[dlu 628]

Been following along, its been noted

[Metrodon 2,184]

By the way, for those using a more sophisticated operating system (OS X) - you can highlight the text you are interested in and using the Services menu send to Apple Mail.

[xjcannonx 5]

Just my two cents: I think this feature would be really handy and nice. Reading this post, I appreciate that GeekDaddy presented his case in a civil manner and didn't let his emotions run wild here. I didn't like how some dismissed his request so quickly. Just because you do not see a use for a particular feature does not mean it is not valuable. Customer feedback directly leads to product improvement and all ideas should be heard out fully and not dismissed pre-maturely.

[GeekDaddy 4]

Thank you, xjcannonx. I appreciate the comment. I suspect that a poll of the user base would find quite a bit of support for getting this feature back into EN.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Just my two cents: I think this feature would be really handy and nice. Reading this post, I appreciate that GeekDaddy presented his case in a civil manner and didn't let his emotions run wild here. I didn't like how some dismissed his request so quickly. Just because you do not see a use for a particular feature does not mean it is not valuable. Customer feedback directly leads to product improvement and all ideas should be heard out fully and not dismissed pre-maturely.

Everyone was civil. And please point out where any one said this would not be valuable. I checked the thread & must have overlooked it.

Heather (an EN employee) posted this twice in the thread, within three days of each post. Her posts are ten & seven days old, so I'd say that makes them fairly current. So it seems pretty clear that no matter how much anyone asks/begs/pleads that this is about as close to an answer as you're going to get at this time. I'm not sure why that is so hard to understand.

You can export the note to .html, then attach it to an Outlook message.

[BenR 0]

I also agree with GeekDaddy in that as a Mac OS user I don't use their mail client but instead use the Outlook/Entourage mail program from Microsoft.

Unlike other programs which comply with my settings for default email program and thus sends/opens Outlook/Entourage for sending emails Evernote is the only application that seems to open the Apple Mail client instead of the default mail client.

[jchiar 2]

By the way, for those using a more sophisticated operating system (OS X) - you can highlight the text you are interested in and using the Services menu send to Apple Mail.

Damn, forgot about the services work around! Thanks for the tip

[dralley 1]

As a relatively new Evernote convert (from DevonThink) I have to confess that being able to easily email a document from Evernote using my local email client would be at the very top of my feature request list. Its not just that I can't customize the default email that Evernote sends out, I would just prefer to send the document to another person using my default email address with my signature etc. The current process to use a local email client is even clunkier because I can't just drag a document from Evernote into Mail or Outlook and have it attach properly. Instead, I have to drag it to my desktop then attach it to an email. I would have to agree with others in this forum that this type of copying of files tends to clutter my desktop and starts to undermine the organizational goals that I have for using a program like EN.

Second, I would agree that this isn't an Outlook (or any email client) specific discussion. I essentially want just a system OS mailto: capability that appears to already exist in many places within the MacOS. I wouldn't expect EN to script this for each email client, I just want EN to use the OS hook that allows this type of thing to occur

[Hot Dog Man 0]

My two cents.....

I am a new Evernote user, and think the product is great and can be very useful. Although, I am having much difficulty with emailing my notes to individuals in my company. We use Postini to filter mail for spam. I cannot get my notes through because the way they sent through Evernote. I know this discussion appears to be going nowhere, but I wanted to say that this could be a make or break issue for me and all of the users form my organization.

[alexjramos 1]

I am in agreement here. I am a premium subscriber. I run my whole life on Evernote. Being able to easily send notes using my default mail client (Outlook) would be excellent. In fact, I would love to see it bi-directional. I would love to be able to easily transfer email TO Evernote from Outlook. I am using The Secret Weapon, and this would really make it sweet.

[rmw1 12]

If you drag an Outlook email to the desktop then add to EN you can reply to the email from EN and it will use Outlook client..

[speedracer 0]

I just wanted to add my +1 to the original author's use case. I use Evernote for personal notes. I have been using OneNote for work and was looking to convert to Evernote for work w/ local notebooks in order to keep the company data w/in the company environment where it is required to be but still get myself to one platform. I landed here searching for how to do the same thing he's requesting. I'm sure we're not alone.

[mqheel 0]

I literally stopped using Evernote because they subtracted this feature from prior versions.  I used to use Evernote to store all important Outlook emails.  They ability to find them, leverage my outlook contacts, and resend them with Outlook (with the sent from Evernote) was invaluable.  Bring this feature back!!!

[MooreK 0]

Yeah, seriously, this should be a no-brainer.  I don't want to have to lookup e-mail addresses and then copy/paste them into an Evernote window just to forward a note.  What if I want the note to go to numerous recipients?  This "feature" is really not usable and it seems like it would be low-hanging fruit to fix.

[cwb 225]

Just my two cents: I think this feature would be really handy and nice. Reading this post, I appreciate that GeekDaddy presented his case in a civil manner and didn't let his emotions run wild here. I didn't like how some dismissed his request so quickly. Just because you do not see a use for a particular feature does not mean it is not valuable. Customer feedback directly leads to product improvement and all ideas should be heard out fully and not dismissed pre-maturely.

Everyone was civil. And please point out where any one said this would not be valuable. I checked the thread & must have overlooked it.

I think it's more the "dismissive" tone, which did read a little sharp in posts #14 and #17. Just feeding back.

As to the technical issues:

Agreeing that it's trivial at the OS level of most desktop OS's to initiate an email via the registered default mail app, pre-populating the To: Subject: and Body fields without knowing anything about the mail client at all.

Just like this does on a website:

 

 

<a href="mailto:EvernoteTest@mailinator.com?subject=Evernote test email

&body=The content of your note would be here">Click to send this via your default mail client</a>

 

The problem with that though is that you also don't know that there's one even configured with valid account settings, and that the mail successfully sent.

I'd be surprised if the local client did any actual emailing. My guess is that the EN client is merely triggering to the EN servers to send out the email. So that there's some surety that it was sent, and allowing some link tracking. There's no end of potential failure points if done locally at the client side. EN currently has the least support cost option.

I've never really bumped into this much though.

If I'm not emailing a shared link (so that I can keep updating the content after it's sent), and I want to use the local mail client, I just Select all and copy to clipboard. Evernote is simple xHTML markup that any HTML capable mail client handles fine from Copy/Paste (caveat that wouldn't include any attachments in the note).

[phils 220]

cwb's comment was spot on, I think.

 

I'd be surprised if the local client did any actual emailing. My guess is that the EN client is merely triggering to the EN servers to send out the email.

This appears correct - looking at the mail header of an email sent out from Evernote, it's being sent from ms-out.evernote.com via Postfix, which is a common SMTP mail server.

 

 

The problem with that though is that you also don't know that there's one even configured with valid account settings

Right again - there's no guarantee that a given computer has a valid mailto: link target defined.

 

Please don't misunderstand - I think it's a very valid wish - I would also like it if the emails used Outlook (and frankly, I'm mulling over possible ways I might accomplish this as an Evernote developer).  But it's a case of "easier said than done", or more accurately "easier said than done reliably".

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Right again - there's no guarantee that a given computer has a valid mailto: link target defined.

. . .

  But it's a case of "easier said than done", or more accurately "easier said than done reliably".

 

 

Really??

 

Every browser I know of uses the default mail client to forward a link/web page.  It is very hard to image that anyone today that does NOT have a email client setup on their system as the default email.

 

IAC, if the default email client is used by Evernote, and the user does NOT want to use it, it is VERY SIMPLE to copy the body of the email and post it into the desired email client.

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that for a very large majority of users, the DEFAULT email  client is the one the user would most likely want to use in sending emails from Evernote.

 

This really is a no-brainer.

[cwb 225]

Right again - there's no guarantee that a given computer has a valid mailto: link target defined.

. . .

  But it's a case of "easier said than done", or more accurately "easier said than done reliably".

 

 

Really??

 

Every browser I know of uses the default mail client to forward a link/web page.  It is very hard to image that anyone today that does NOT have a email client setup on their system as the default email.

 

IAC, if the default email client is used by Evernote, and the user does NOT want to use it, it is VERY SIMPLE to copy the body of the email and post it into the desired email client.

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that for a very large majority of users, the DEFAULT email  client is the one the user would most likely want to use in sending emails from Evernote.

 

This really is a no-brainer.

Hmmm. I've done IT support on a lot of home PC's. it's pretty common that the default mail client isn't configured, and you're granted with a new account setup wizard when clicking an mail to link.

And really, when windows mail is the default, it's not surprising that for millions of PC's Gmail or even Yahoo mail in the browser is the default.

[GeekDaddy 4]

Hmmm. I've done IT support on a lot of home PC's. it's pretty common that the default mail client isn't configured, and you're granted with a new account setup wizard when clicking an mail to link.

And really, when windows mail is the default, it's not surprising that for millions of PC's Gmail or even Yahoo mail in the browser is the default.

 

EN users who use Gmail, Yahoo, or some other web-based email aren't the ones who need this the most.  In fact, for the vast majority of them the status quo probably works just fine.  They're NOT the primary audience for this.

 

The most compelling audience, at least in estimation, is those of us who have private, local-only notebooks in the Mac and Windows clients, specifically because the contents are proprietary company data that cannot be sent outside of the network without violating company policy, but who also would like to share those notes with colleagues via email.  For me to share notes from a local-only notebook, I have to make the note a shared note, essentially, by letting it go to the EN cloud, from which it is sent through their mail services to the intended recipient.  This completely defeats the point of having the note in a local-only notebook to begin with, and it is not acceptable for notes containing company data.

As for the handling of mailto: links via a default mail client, for home users, you're right that it sometimes happens that there is no default mail client used, more frequently in the last several years.  Typically, it happens when they're using a web-based mail client for everything.  For anyone who has an application-based mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc), that application will either already be registered as the default mail client for all email links, or else prompt the user to make it the default upon installation or initial configuration.  At that point the OS will invoke that application for otherwise-unhandled email calls.  Other applications (browsers, typically, but any application, for that matter) only have to invoke the default mail client to have it send mail.  Simply enough, if you don't have or otherwise need a default mail client already configured in your OS, this isn't your feature.

 

That said, my initial request was for this to be an option.  I think it would be best to leave the current email sharing method in place as the default, out-of-the-box config.  I (and based on these posts, many others) would prefer to have the ability to choose our default OS mail client to send notes via email, rather than being forced into Evernote's cloud service.  It's especially critical for those of us who would like to send notes containing confidential and/or proprietary data, and who are currently unable or unwilling to do so because of corporate policy, privacy concerns, non-disclosure compliance liability, and a variety of other reasons.

 

As an EN user back in the 1.x and 2.x days, the pre-cloud EN application sent all emailed notes via the default mail client.  This is not a new invention, as I've tried to mention in the past. This is something that was actually once part of the original incarnation of Evernote.  More importantly, there are quite literally dozens of other applications that manage to provide this feature very well.  To wit, open up a PDF document in Adobe Reader.  Under the 'File' dropdown menu, there's a selection that says 'Send File...', which prompts you if you want to send the file via your default mail application (in my case, it even tells me it's Outlook), or using webmail, letting me select between the pre-defined options of Gmail and Yahoo, or else to configure my own webmail solution.  I also have the checkbox to have it remember my choice.  It also has a link for using Adobe SendNow, which is their cloud service, IIRC.  Other applications which have this capability?  Notepad++ and WinZip, and I'm sure we can find many other examples.

 

My point is simply that this feature is hardly breaking new ground.  It's possible, it's out there in other applications, and I believe that the EN Mac and Windows standalone applications would benefit from having it.  More importantly, so would the user base.

 

-Ben

[cwb 225]

As for my part, I can't disagree with a thing there.

It's certainly not breaking new ground.  If any thing it was a little bit of old ground.  I wondered if there was enough affected user base for it to percolate up to EN attention.

I am fascinated in your mention of Adobe Reader allowing you to choose webmail.  I'd long left that for other safer options, but that's sure a bit of code I'd like to see more commonly used.

I can't remember the last time I used the send mail to the default app, because of it being so crippled.  I'm rarely at a traditional dedicated desktop, and even when I am, my mail is bifurcated between work and personal, Gmail, Exchange (more often OWA and iOS than Outlook), etc.

It's intriguing that Adobe has that flexibility.

Particularly since normally, as per Google's own documentation, to get Gmail to be usable as the default mail app, requires installing the Google Notifier app.

[pompeynick 0]

Just trying Evernote because Penultimate + Dropbox is now too clunky when filing/sending meeting notes - surprised that I can't just email stuff from Evernote using my default email client (Outlook).  Makes it much less useful for me.

[skaboy71 0]

Just adding my 2C here.

 

I work for  SaaS company and I think this should be added back as a feature …

 

I'm forced to use outlook and I'd really like to be able to email my notes to people without needing to jump through a bunch of hoops.

 

Help us out here EN team ??

 

Thanks!

 

[eLindros 0]

I once used Mendeley in order to collect papers and webpages. They drove me crazy with their way to send a paper per mail over their own server. Because:

• my address book isn't integrated
• my signature isn't integrated
• my default (work) email address isn't integrated for reply
• Mendeley got to know the email addresses of people, which they might use for spamming or selling
• It felt like giving away my papers and notes to a company and they would decide how I could use them
• It felt like getting locked in

So, please, don't go the same path with Evernote.
 

+1

[dgduris 0]

It is interesting to me. I read threads like this and I think about how many people use Outlook, Live, Hotmail and I wonder why groups like Evernote, Mac-centric apps and Google all disappear when you ask about linking to a vast source of new users: Microsoft Email applications.

 

Why is that?  Having worked in the company of both Mac and PC users I get the "every dog to their preferred hydrant" perspective and being a user of both OS's, I think it unprofessional - at best - that people generally dis whichever OS they don't use. 

 

I expect Evernote to be above that...and hope we get the ability to link our Outlook, Hotmail, Live contacts soon - just like those a-holes with G-mail accounts can. ;-)