By Mark O’Neill

These days, with 6GB+ Gmail accounts and unlimited Yahoo accounts, email addresses are being used for more than just email.   Many people email themselves backups of many things including important documents, music, photos, video files and much more.  This way, they are not screwed if the original copy is destroyed or goes missing.  Plus their files are accessible from any internet-enabled PC.

But it can be a drag.  First you have to open a new email window, then you have to click on the attachment link, find the attachment then fill out the email address… there must be an easier, faster way to email yourself a backup of something right?   Well there is – the rather unoriginally named BackupToEmail.

This nifty little program installs an option in your Windows Explorer right-click menu which enables you to right-click on a file, choose the backup option and have it immediately sent to your designated email account.   It also installs a link in your right-click “send to” options which zips and sends the file to you.

When you first set it up, you need to tweak the program to suit yourself :

The beauty of this is that it is not locked into one email service – whether you use Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or a really obscure service, it still works.  It also supports multiple email addresses.Now just right-click on your desired file in Windows Explorer, choose “Backup to email” and it immediately starts sending via a SSL SMTP server :

The file arrives in your email extremely fast, and so far, I’ve seen nothing to give me cause for concern.  It does what it claims to do. If you like, you can also alter the registry settings if you don’t like “Backup to email” in your right-click menu.  You can easily change it to “Gmail This!” or “Yahoo It!” if you’d prefer to give your menu that personal touch. Using this program, you can email backups to yourself in a matter of seconds – and you’ll wonder how you managed to survive without it up to now.