how do I take screen shot and then paste into email?

• Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen
• Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area

then, attach the screenshot as a file.

Once you take the screenshot, it will be placed on your desktop; its name will be "Screenshot" followed by the date and time the picture was taken.

You can either use the "attach" button to add the screenshot to your email, as shldr2thewheel suggests; or you can just drag the screenshot from the desktop into the New Message window and let go - it will be placed there automatically.

Yet another way - after taking the screenshot, doubleclick that file on the desktop; it will be opened in Preview. Press Command-A (Select All in the Edit menu), then press Command-C (Copy in Edit menu). Then, switch to the New Message window, place the insertion point where you want the image to appear, and press Command-V (Paste in the Edit menu).

Once the image has been added to the New Message window, a new pulldown menu will appear in the lower right of the window allowing you to adjust its displayed size.

I could not grab a screenshot, paste it into Mac Mail, and have it received. Saving the snapshot to the desktop and dragging it into Mac Mail worked. However, I wanted to paste it directly without having to save a jpeg file.

The solution I found was to paste the screenshot as a quotation. The menu item is Edit>Paste as Quotation. The keyboard shortcut for this is ⇧ ⌃⌘ 4 (Shift-Control-Command 4) to take the screenshot and ⇧⌘v (Shift-Command v) to paste it into the email text. Be sure that rich text format is in use: menu item Format>Make Rich Text.

This solution took a lot of fruitless Googling, but a look at the menus in Mac Mail turned up a hidden solution to a vexing problem.

Thank you, this worked. Saving pointless files is well...pointless and Apple should make this easier.