How to compress multiple .jpg files simultaneously, using "Send to"?

Question

If I have say 20 photographs saved as .jpgs, each of size 3MB, and I need to send them as attachments to an email, it can be useful to compress them each to say no more than a few hundred kB before sending. This may be done for individual files by means of the following procedure:

• select, right-click, then choose Send to... | Mail recipient, then Medium: 1024 x 768
• click on Attach.

This makes Microsoft Outlook do its business, and you can then

• select a .jpg file in that program's Compose: Emailing window and click to open it,
• choose Save to Disk, and then
• save it where you want, and you will find that you are saving a compressed file

Note that this does not require using MS Outlook as your mail client, which practically nobody who has had experience with a proper mail client would wish to do.

My question is how can we amend the above procedure to compress several files at once. At the moment when I try to do this by selecting multiple files in the Compose: Emailing window I can get all the way to saving, but the files are saved uncompressed.

I am using Windows 7 Pro with Service Pack 1.

Answer 1

It appears that it isn't your e-mail application that is accomplishing this - it is your operating system. Likewise, it's not really compressing the files per se - you're just resizing them dramatically, which reduces the file size. It is possible to use the same steps you were, only you can first select multiple pictures and then use the Send to > Mail recipient step to bulk resize them to whatever size you've selected - for example, if you select Medium: 1024 x 768, the 1024 x 768 is what Windows considers a standard landscape picture in Medium size, but the actual numbers for a Medium sized portrait picture will be different (though the option will still say 1024 x 768). From there you could just save them from your mail app as you normally would.

On a side note, if you wanted to send multiple files into one compressed folder, you could use the following steps:

• Put all of the pictures in a folder
• Right-click the folder
• Highlight Send to
• Select Compressed (zipped) folder
• Name the compressed folder what you want
• Right-click the compressed folder
• Send to mail recipient as you were previously

This won't reduce the size nearly as much for what you are trying to compress, but it can be an option with other file types.