Emailing large files

I want to email a file but it's too big to attach - what can I do?

It is possible to make a file smaller. In Windows right click on the file and select ‘Send To’ .... ‘Compressed (zipped) Folder’. Windows will make a compressed copy of your file – you will spot it either by the filename changing to something.zip or having a folder icon with a zip on it. This file will usually be a lot smaller than your original and possibly small enough to email. This doesn’t work well for some media files like MP3 music or video as the data in these is already compressed but other file types can shrink to a fraction of their initial size.

When the file gets to its recipient they simply double-click on it and this will reveal the contents.

Your second option is to use an email account that has a bigger size limit – perhaps Hotmail or GoogleMail (Gmail) which will go up to 20Mb. Bear in mind that your recipient’s mailbox may also have a size restriction!

Thirdly, you can use a service for emailing large files such as http://www.yousendit.com/. This gets round the email size limit by not actually emailing the file. The process is simple – you specify the file and the recipient, the file is uploaded to a secure server and your recipient is sent a small email telling them the file is there and giving them a link to download it. Bear in mind that if you are on an ADSL link that the upload speed is usually much slower than the download speed you get when browsing and downloading files. A large file may take a while to upload.