In this movie I'm going to show you how to create a couple of useful Automator workflows. We'll start with one that, with a simple drag and drop, allows you to compress and email a file. It goes like this.

Launch Automator and from the template sheet that appears, choose Application and click Choose. Here's your workflow window with libraries of actions on the left, the actions associated with the selected library next to it, and the workflow area taking up the bulk of the window.

Select the Files & Folders library and in the Actions area, drag the Create Archive action to the workflow area. We'll leave the settings as they are, which is to use the same name as the original file and save the compressed archive to the desktop.

Now select the Mail library and drag its New Mail Message action to the workflow. If you'd like, you can pre-address messages in this action--something you might do if you routinely send compressed files to the same person.