How to Send Large Files Over Email

How to Send Large Files Over Email

Many email servers refuse to accept email attachments over 10MB in size. While attachment sizes haven’t kept up with the times, there are other easy ways to send someone large files over email.

If you’re using Gmail or Outlook.com, your email service will automatically give you a helping hand and suggest alternatives. If you’re using a desktop email client or another service, you may need to know about these tricks yourself.

What’s the Maximum Size of an Email Attachment?

In theory, there’s no limit to the amount of data you can attach to an email. Email standards don’t specify any sort of size limit. In practice, most email servers enforce their own size limits.

In general, when attaching files to an email, you can be reasonably sure that up to 10MB of attachments are okay. Some email servers may have smaller limits, but 10MB is generally the standard.

Gmail allows you to attach up to 25MB to a single email, but this is only guaranteed to work if you’re emailing other Gmail users. As soon as the email leaves Gmail’s servers, it could be rejected by another email server. Many servers are configured to not accept more than 10MB of attachments.

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It’s not even as simple as looking at the maximum attachment size of the service you use and the service you’re emailing — emails often travel over several mail transfer agents when they’re sent, so you may have your attachment rejected by a server along the way if you attach too much data.

You should also bear in mind that email attachments are generally MIME encoded, which increases their size by about 33%. So 10MB of files on your disk will become about 13MB of data when attached to an email.

Use a Cloud Storage Service

By far the simplest option would be storing the file — or files — you want to share in a cloud storage service like Dropbox, Google Drive, or SkyDrive. You could then share the file with someone and inform them that the file is shared over email. They could click a link and download the file directly to their computer.

If you use Gmail or Outlook.com, you’ll find that Google and Microsoft have integrated Google Drive and SkyDrive into their respective email services. Just click the Google Drive or SkyDrive button when sending an email and you’ll be able to share a file via email. Gmail and Outlook will walk you through choosing a file that already exists in your cloud storage drive or uploading a new file.

If you use something like Dropbox, you can share the file from the cloud storage service’s website. For example, right-click a file on Dropbox’s website and select Share link if you use Dropbox.

This is the option many email providers are pushing us towards — if you try to attach a large file in Gmail or Outlook.com, you’ll be prompted to upload it to Google Drive or SkyDrive first.

Create and Send Multi-Part Archives

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If you’re looking for a more traditional, do-it-yourself method, you can opt to split the file up into smaller parts. For example, if you had a 50MB file you wanted to email, you could use a file compression program like 7-Zip to create an archive containing that file, splitting the archive into five 10MB pieces.

You could then attach all the 10MB portions to separate emails. The recipient would have to download each attachment and use a file extraction program to extract the larger, complete file from the separate archives.

This traditional method still works as well as it always did. However, it can be fairly cumbersome. Many people would be confused by the separate attachments and wouldn’t enjoy jumping through hoops to reassemble them. If you’re not sure whether your recipient will know how to do this, it’s probably better to choose an easier method.

Use a Large-File Sending Service

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In response to the difficulty of sending large file attachments over email, a large number of large-file-sending services have sprung up online. These services allow you to upload a file and give you a link. You can then paste that link into an email and the recipient can click the link and download the file.

These services have to make money somehow, and they may do it by displaying ads, limiting the maximum file size available to free users, or demanding a subscription fee. We’ve covered the many online services for sending and sharing large files before.

Such options work fine, but you may prefer using a cloud storage service instead. When you use one of these services, you’re entrusting it with your files — that works okay if your files aren’t particularly sensitive, but you’ll probably want to shy away from uploading sensitive data to a free service you haven’t heard of before. Of course, you could encrypt the files before uploading them — but that would add additional hassle for the recipient, too.

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Many email services also block potentially dangerous file types, like .EXE files, because they could contain malware. If you used the services above instead, you’d be able to send links to such files without them being blocked.

How to Send Large Files Over Email

Email VIRUS Infections

HTG Explains: Why You Can’t Get Infected Just By Opening an Email (and When You Can)

Email viruses are real, but computers aren’t infected just by opening emails anymore. Just opening an email to view it is safe – although attachments can still be dangerous to open.

Past security problems with Microsoft Outlook resulted in a lot of damage, and some people still believe that just opening an email is dangerous. This isn’t true.

Why Opening an Email is Safe

Emails are essentially text or HTML documents (web pages). Just like opening a text file or web page in your browser should be safe, opening an email message should also be safe. Whether you are using Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, or another web-based or desktop email client, opening an email – even a suspicious looking one – should be safe.

However, some emails may try to infect you after you open them. They may contain malicious programs as attachments or have links to malicious websites full of malware and scams. You should only run trustworthy attachments – even if someone you trust sends you file attachment with a .exe file or another program file, you probably should not open it. They may be compromised.

As with everything on the web, you shouldn’t run programs that try to automatically download onto your computer after you click a link.

Why Opening Emails Was Once Unsafe

In the past, Microsoft Outlook had a serious security problem. Emails – which were once just plain text – are also allowed to contain HTML code: the same code that web pages like this one are written in. An Outlook vulnerability allowed emails to run JavaScript code and infect your computer. For this reason, just opening an email was potentially dangerous.

However, this vulnerability was fixed. Emails cannot use JavaScript. Modern email clients don’t even automatically display images in emails. As with web browsers, operating systems, and other computer programs, security holes are occasionally discovered and patched.

As long as you are using up-to-date software – including your mail client, browser, browser plugins, and operating system – you should be able to open email messages and view them without fear.

Email Safety Tips

File attachments and links in email can still present danger. Follow these best practices to stay safe:

• Keep Your Mail Client, Web Browser, and Operating System Updated: Software updates are important, as the bad guys regularly find holes and try to exploit them. Software updates close these holes and protect you. If you are running an outdated browser and email client, you could be compromised. (If you have Java installed, you should uninstall it or at least disable the browser plugin to protect yourself, too.)
• Use Antivirus Software: On Windows, antivirus software is an important layer of protection. It can help protect you from both mistakes and software bugs that allow malware to run without your permission.
• Don’t Run Dangerous Attachments: If you get a PDF file from someone, it’s probably safe to open (especially if your PDF reader is up-to-date). However, if you suddenly get an email with a .exe file or another potentially dangerous type of file you aren’t expecting – even if it’s from someone you know – you probably shouldn’t run the attachment. Exercise extreme caution with email attachments – they are still a common source of infection.
• Be Careful of Links: Clicking links should be safe, just as loading a website in your browser should be safe. However, if the link looks like it leads to a site packed with malware and acai berry scams, you probably shouldn’t click it. If you do click a link, don’t download and run any potentially dangerous files. You should also watch out for phishing – if you click a link in an email that appears to be from your bank and end up on a similar-looking website, it may not actually be your bank’s website, but a clever imposter.

For more information about dangerous phishing emails, read Online Security: Breaking Down the Anatomy of a Phishing Email.

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There are a variety of problems you could encounter with email: dangerous file attachments, scams that try to take your money, phishing emails that attempt to steal your personal data, and links to dangerous websites. However, just opening an email shouldn’t cause any problems.

How to stop Facebook notification emails

Ask Dave Taylor: How do I stop Facebook notification email bugging me?

My Dad only lets me check Facebook once a week to ensure that I focus on my schoolwork, which is fine with me as it's usually just a huge waste of time. Problem is, Facebook keeps reminding me every day that I don't log in that I'm "missing out" on lots of updates. How can I just get Facebook to shut up about what's going on?

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Dave's Answer:

I'm impressed that your Dad's given you a rule about Facebook usage and you're following it so strictly. He's done a good job of raising you, I'd say. But then again, I'm a Dad so I think fathers should get at least 50% if not 100% of the credit for raising great children. :-)

You're right to be wary of the time sink that is Facebook too. It's great fun and certainly interesting to see what's going on with your friends and family, but it can also be a never-ending process and one that's smart to ration. Yes, you'll miss things, but that's inevitable anyway unless you obsessively check out what's going on and if you're doing that, you've just relegated yourself to the role of observer, rather than someone who is actually doing cool and fun things and posting occasional updates that make other people want to know what's going on in your life.

Facebook also has about a million different events it can email you about, and they can be quite annoying because by default I think every single thing is enabled.

Let's fix that.

But before we do, here's a typical "you haven't visited for a while" email that you might get from Facebook if you're not connecting all the time:

All well and good, but if you don't want to be reminded that there are things going on in Facebook-land, rather annoying too.

To disable it, or just set it so that Facebook emails you when there's something actually important going on, log in and click on Account Settings:

On the left there's a menu. Pick "Notifications":

Now you'll see a sort of summary of what notifications have been sent, along with the ability to modify specific notification settings. Notice also on the top right the "Email Frequency" option:

You can click on the checkbox adjacent to "Email Frequency" if you'd like to just let Facebook slow down the flow of messages, but instead let's fine tune things ourselves because, well, it's Facebook's zeal at trying to get us to visit the site that's caused the problem in the first place!

Click on "Edit" adjacent to "Facebook" under the "All Notifications" section and you'll see that, as I suggested earlier, there are a zillion different settings:

I suggest you spend a few minutes going through this list and disable just about everything. Do you need an email when someone confirms a friend request? Joins FB after your invite? Posts content? Likes a post you're tagged in?

Yeah, I thought not.

Make the changes you want, then click on "Save Changes" and you're good to go.

My experience with social media is that it's all a huge time sink and while it's fun and interesting, I have a life to live, so I try to balance things because the digital world's always going to be there, but life itself is rather fleeting...

How do I stop Facebook notification email bugging me? :: Online Tech Support Help :: Ask Dave Taylor!®

5 Ways to Shrink Your Outlook PST File Size

5 Ways to Shrink Your Outlook PST File Size
by DEBORAH SAVADRA

If you’ve been working with Microsoft Outlook for long, and particularly if you’re working in a Exchange Server environment (which set some pretty strict limits on file size), your Outlook .pst file may be getting too large. While you may not want to adhere to the fabled Inbox Zero standard, doing a little mail maintenance periodically will help Outlook run better. Here are five strategies for paring down your .pst file’s size.

Groom your Deleted Items folder

You’re really good about deleting Inbox messages you no longer need, right? But if they’re not being removed from your Deleted Items folder, they still count toward the total Outlook file size.

You can empty the Deleted Items folder one of two ways: manually or automatically. To do this manually, right-click on your Deleted Items folder, choose Empty Folder, and they’re gone.

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If you’re confident enough to say that, when you delete an e-mail, you never want to see it again, choose the automatic option. Go to the File tab and choose Options, then click Advanced. Under Outlook Start and Exit, you’ll see a checkbox next to “Empty Deleted Items folders when exiting Outlook.” Check that and click OK to save the setting.

Eliminate duplicate e-mails

Every time you forward an e-mail (particularly with attachments) to staff members, you are effectively doubling the size of storage necessary for that information, since by default a copy of that e-mail with its attachments now resides not only in your Inbox but in your Sent Items folder as well.

If there’s no longer a compelling reason to keep the forwarded version of that e-mail, go ahead and delete it out of your Sent Items folder. One trick to make this easier is to sort the e-mails in your Sent Items folder by recipient. It’s easy – just click on the To header in your Sent Items folder:

(You can simply instruct Outlook not to save forwarded messages in your Sent Items folder via a setting in the Mail/Save Messages section under Outlook Options accessible via the File tab. By default, however, any message you send, forwarded or not, is saved in the Sent Items folder.)

Save individual e-mails

Many Outlook users don’t realize they can save individual Outlook e-mails outside the Inbox in a variety of formats. Simply open the e-mail, go to the File tab, and click Save As.

You can save the e-mail as a plain text document, or you can save it in the Outlook Message format (.msg), which will preserve the formatting of the original e-mail.

Since any attachments to that message are saved in a temporary folder in Windows, it’s probably a good idea to right-click on any attachments and save them separately in the same folder on your hard drive (and make sure it’s backed up frequently).

Archive to Adobe Acrobat

If you’re ready to close a particular matter, and you got all the relevant e-mails sorted into a subfolder under your Inbox, you can use Adobe Acrobat to create an archive file that you can save your electronic records. The latest version of Adobe Acrobat include some pretty cool tools for archiving e-mail. In any version, the result is a conveniently searchable archive in a format virtually any computer can use.

Archive via Outlook

Once you’ve been using Outlook for multiple years, you may want to get into the habit of archiving your Inbox and Sent Items folders annually (or even more often if necessary).

It’s possible to automate this archiving, but since that tends to slow down the computer if you’re dealing with a large volume of e-mail, you may want to set this up manually and go to lunch. To start archiving a particular folder, go to the File tab, and under Cleanup Tools, choose Archive.

Choose the folder you want to archive (and be aware that all subfolders under that folder will be archived as well), choose the “older than” date, hit the Browse button if you want to specify a particular location and/or file name, then click OK. Depending on the volume of e-mail you’re processing, this is going to take a little while, so take a break from the computer.

Once the archive is complete, you have a separate .pst file with the older e-mails intact. If you ever need to access them again, simply go to the File tab, click Open, then choose Open Outlook Data File.

The “stitch in time” approach

If you can work some of these strategies into your regular routine, you’ll be far ahead of colleagues who suddenly can’t send or receive e-mail because their Outlook file has gotten too large. A little maintenance here and there will save you from a similar fate.

What’s the Difference Between POP3, IMAP, and Exchange?

Email: What’s the Difference Between POP3, IMAP, and Exchange?

We send a lot of email these days—at work, at home, on our phones… But do you know what all the email jargon means? Keep reading to find out more about the difference between the various ways to receive email.

Whether you use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, or email configured on your own website—there’s more to receiving email that it might seem like on the surface. Today, we’ll be focusing on some answering some of the most common stumbling blocks when it comes to setting up new email accounts, and explaining the difference in clear language. For our geekier readers that already know that stuff, feel free to join in the discussion—let us know how you explain to relatives and tech-challenged coworkers the difference in common email setups… or simply share this guide and save yourself the trouble of explaining it!

Email Clients vs Webmail

Before we explain the different protocols used to download emails, let’s take a few minutes to understand the simpler stuff—the difference between email clients and webmail. If you’ve ever started a Gmail, Hotmail, or other email account, chances are you’ve used webmail. If you work in an office and use a program like Microsoft Outlook, Windows Live Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird to manage your emails, you’re using an email client.

Both webmail and email clients are applications for sending and receiving email, and they use similar methods for doing this. Webmail is an application that is written to be operated over the internet through a browser, usually with no downloaded applications or additional software necessary. All of the work, so to speak, is done by remote computers (i.e. servers and machines you connect to through the internet).

Email clients are programs that are installed on local machines (i.e. your computer, or the computers in your office) to interact with remote email servers to download and send email to whomever you might care to. Some the back end work of sending email and all of the front end work of creating a user interface (what you look at to receive your email) is done on your computer with the installed application, rather than by your browser with instructions from the remote server. However, many webmail providers allow users to use email clients with their service—and here’s where it may start to get confusing. Let’s run through a quick example to explain the difference.

We sign up for a new email address with Google’s Gmail and begin sending and receiving email through the webmail service. Google is providing two things for us—a web frontend, and a mail server backend for sending and receiving the emails. We communicate with the email server backend by using the webmail frontend. Through our pointing, clicking, and typing, we’re telling the email server who we want to send email to, and what we want to say.

But, we might decide that we don’t like Google’s new look for Gmail, so we decide to switch to an email client, like the free program Thunderbird. Instead of using our web based client (Gmail’s web interface) to interact with Google’s Gmail servers (the mail server backend), we use a program installed on our computers (in this case, Thunderbird) to contact the mail server backend ourselves, and sidestep webmail altogether. Google (and other webmail providers) offer all of these products, including the web frontend and the mail server backend. You can use both of them or only the mail server backend and still be using “Gmail.” And with that confusion dispelled, let’s take a look at the common email protocols you’ll run into using email clients or mobile phones.

POP3, Post Office Protocol

POP, or Post Office Protocol, is a way of retrieving email information that dates back to a very different internet than we use today. Computers only had limited, low bandwidth access to remote computers, so engineers created POP in an effort to create a dead simple way to download copies of emails for offline reading, then remove those mails from the remote server. The first version of POP was created in 1984, with the POP2 revision created in early 1985.

POP3 is the current version of this particular style of email protocol, and still remains one of the most popular. Since POP3 creates local copies of emails and deletes the originals from the server, the emails are tied to that specific machine, and cannot be accessed via any webmail or any separate client on other computers. At least, not without doing a lot of email forwarding or porting around mailbox files.

While POP3 is based on an older model of offline email, there’s no reason to call it obsolete technology, as it does have its uses. POP4 has been proposed, and may be developed one day, although there’s not been much progress in several years.

IMAP, Internet Message Access Protocol

IMAP was created in 1986, but seems to suit the modern day world of omnipresent, always-on internet connectivity quite well. The idea was keep users from having to be tied to a single email client, giving them the ability to read their emails as if they were “in the cloud.”

Compared to POP3, IMAP allows users to log into many different email clients or webmail interfaces and view the same emails, because the emails are kept on remote email servers until the user deletes them. In a world where we now check our email on web interfaces, email clients, and on mobile phones, IMAP has become extremely popular. It isn’t without its problems, though.

Because IMAP stores emails on a remote mail server, you’ll have a limited mailbox size depending on the settings provided by the email service. If you have huge numbers of emails you want to keep, you could run into problems sending and receiving mail when your box is full. Some users sidestep this problem by making local archived copies of emails using their email client, and then deleting them from the remote server.

Microsoft Exchange, MAPI, and Exchange ActiveSync

Microsoft began developing MAPI (sometimes called Messaging API) not long after IMAP and POP were first developed, although it has uses beyond simple email. Thoroughly comparing IMAP and POP to MAPI is pretty technical, and out of scope for many readers of this article. Simply put, MAPI is a way for applications and email clients to communicate with Microsoft Exchange servers, and is capable of IMAP style syncing of emails, contacts, calendars, and other features, all tied into local email clients or applications. This function of syncing emails is branded by Microsoft as “Exchange ActiveSync.” Depending on what device, phone, or client you use, this same technology might be called any of the three Microsoft products (Microsoft Exchange, MAPI, or Exchange ActiveSync), but will offer the same cloud-based email syncing as IMAP.

Because Exchange and MAPI are Microsoft products, only companies that own their own Exchange mail servers or use Windows Live Hotmail will be able to use Exchange. Many clients, including the default Android mail client and iPhone, are Exchange ActiveSync capable, giving Hotmail users IMAP style cloud-based email, despite Hotmail not offering true IMAP functionality.

Other Email Protocols

Yes, there are other protocols for sending, recieving, and using email, but most of us that are using plain old free webmail and mobile phones will be using one of these three major ones. Since these three technologies cover the needs of nearly all HTG readers, we won’t be spending time today talking about the others. If you have any experience using email protocols not listed here, we’re interested to hear about it—feel free to discuss them in the comments.

In Short: Which Do I Use to Set Up My Email?

Depending on your personal style of communicating and whom you prefer to get your email service from, you can pretty quickly narrow down how you should use your email.

• If you use check your email from a lot of devices, phones, or computers, set up your email clients to use IMAP.
• If you use mostly webmail and want your phone or iPad to sync with your webmail, use IMAP, as well.
• If you’re using one email client on one dedicated machine (say, in your office), you might be fine with POP3.
• If you have a huge history of email, you may want to use POP3 to keep from running out of space on the remote email server.
• If you use Hotmail or an Exchange Server Email, MAPI or Exchange ActiveSync will give you similar cloud-based syncing, like IMAP.
• If you don’t use Hotmail and you want email sync, use IMAP. If you do use it and want email sync, use MAPI/Exchange ActiveSync.