Hi Ian
No, not a stupid question.
A gedcom is just a formatted text file of the data.
I assume from your comments that you already have the gedcom?
Copy it (for safety) and call the copy, say, MyTree_May11.ged ( or even .txt )
Open with Wordpad (right click, open with. OR doubleclick if you have renamed it .txt)
Voila !?!
You can now see the content.
To send it (either/both copy files) via email.
Rightclick, select "Send to", select "email recipient".
(I have assumed that you maybe using Thunderbird/Outlook/OutlookExpress/ )
Should that not work . you send mail a different way, then repost with how you send emails
(eg Mail2web, or Hotmail, outlook.com etc)
Ray