When you send emails using Microsoft’s version of Outlook.com, you will encounter limitations on file size when you attempt uploading a large file. Outlook will not allow you to send large attachments or messages on email servers hosted on the web, such as Outlook.com. If you do this, you might confront an error message that reads—Attachment size exceeds the allowable limit. This article will tell you about a few ways you can send large size attachments from Office Outlook. Make sure you read this article till the end.
What is The Outlook File Size Limit?
Outlook does not allow its users to send emails with attachments larger than 20 MB. However, most other mail servers accept 25 MB or larger attachments. The reason for the attachment size limit is primarily the security of users. Ideally, no file you send over email should be larger than 20-25 MBs. Smaller files are at a lesser risk of carrying a virus. For sharing files in GBs, using a file-sharing service would be ideal. Also, the larger the size of files over email, the more time it’ll take emails to get delivered, and it will supposedly cause more stress on the mail server.
How Can You Send Large Files Using Outlook
Here are some of the tried and tested ways you can send large file attachments over Outlook mail. Here’s what we are going to talk about:
- Send Attachments Through Cloud Storage Services
- Reducing and Resizing Image Attachments
- Combine and Compress File Attachments Before Sending
- Split the Files Into Smaller Sizes
You can choose one or a combination of methods to send large files.
1. Send Attachments Through Cloud Storage Services
The most efficient option for sending massive or too many files is cloud storage or a file-sharing service. There are a variety of secure and reliable choices available, such as Dropbox and Google Drive.
The two most popular web-based email providers, Gmail and Outlook.com, have integrated file-sharing services, such as Google Drive and Onedrive, into their services. Try to send the file that’s too large, and you will be asked to upload the file to the cloud and then attach the link instead.
If you are sending an email using Outlook on your desktop or prefer an online file storage option that does not connect directly to an email service like Dropbox. Upload the file, right-click on it and choose “share link.” Now paste the link into your email, and the recipient will be able to open the file by clicking it. The steps to send large size attachments through OneDrive are given below:
- Log into your OneDrive account with Outlook credentials.
- Upload or right-click on the file you wish to share and select Share.
- At this stage, you have two options. You can enter an email address for all the people you would like to send the files to or create a link to embed into the body of the email message. If you have chosen to include the link in your email, you must press the Copy Link tab.
- Click copy button and open the email message > Insert tab > Links > Link.
- Within the address box, copy and paste the link copied earlier.
- It is evident that the hyperlink is embedded into the body of the message, as illustrated below.
Check out the list of file-sharing services if you want more options.
2. Reducing And Resizing Image Attachments
While images are not often too large, there can be times when you may want to attach an image larger than 20 MBs in size or multiple images totaling to be more than 20 MBs. Reducing the size of the photos can be a good option. There are several tools available online. Some of them can drastically reduce the quality of your images. Here’s how you can reduce and resize your images without losing quality:
- Visit Tinyjpg.com
- Upload images files for compression on the site by clicking on the drop your files area. A file explorer window will open. Select the files you want to upload.
- Once uploaded, the site will automatically start the compression process. You can either choose to download the compressed images files separately or all together as a zip file.
- Once the process completes, download the files on your computer and attach them as you’ll do to any other file.
Using Tinyjpg.com, you can reduce the file size by a lot without losing a considerable amount of file quality. Do try this method out.
If you want to share extremely large-size images, you can also check out the list of large-size image-sharing services.
3. Combine and Compress File Attachments Before Sending
Some files are too big to be compressed online. If you go online and compress a large video file, you will have to spend a lot of time and internet data. Video files are different often surpass the limit on sharing attachments via Outlook emails.
The solution to the large file types should be compressing them with the zip file before adding them to an Outlook email. Zip files can also combine several files into one. While creating the zip file will automatically compress your files; however, it’s not suitable for already compressed files.
For instance, a popular image format, jpg, is already compressed to a decent state. Therefore, zipping files like this won’t decrease the size by much. Once the recipient has received the file in zip format, they have to unzip the files out of the zip file.
Follow the below process to send large files like this via Outlook email.
Creating a Zip File
- The first thing now you have to do is to zip large files. Navigate to File Explorer and select the files you want to zip. Press the keys Ctrl + Shift to select multiple files.
- Suppose the selected files exceed the limit of 20MB – Right-click on the files you want to open for the pop-up menu.
- Click on Send to > Zipped or Compressed Folder. The system will automatically create the zip file with the entire files you chose.
It is important to note that the size of the zip file is less than the amount of all the files. If you wish to change the file’s name, you can now.
A zip file is yet another file, so to attach the file, follow the same steps you’ll follow to attach any other file.
Extracting The Files From A Zip File
When the recipient receives your email with a ZIP file, they will have to extract those files. It’s not difficult when you know how to do it, so follow the steps to extract files.
- To access the files contained in a zip file, download the file by clicking on the attachment.
- After downloading the zip file to a location on your device, you would like to save it, use File Explorer to navigate the directory where you’ve saved your zip files. Click on the file to select in
- In the Top Bar, you’ll see an extract all option. Click on it.
- Select the location to store the extracted files and click the Extract button. The files are then extracted to your preferred location.
4. Split the Files Into Smaller Sizes
Even after compressing the files, if the file size exceeds the fixed limit, you can try splitting the files into multiple separate files and sending them in different emails. However, this will be a long process. If you have a zip file and want to split it, extract the files and send them separately. If you have a video, you need to split it using a video editor. If there is an image file, splitting it will not be favorable. It would help if you tried compressing it.
You can also use a video compressor, but it may decrease the overall quality of the video. One of the easy ways to share videos is using sites such as YouTube.
Why Do Email Providers Have File Sharing Limits?
Email should not be used as a means of sharing larger files. The primary reason for email providers to impose limits on file sharing is the security of their users since larger files can more easily carry malware. Also, sharing larger files puts tremendous stress on the email servers, often resulting in the slow delivery of emails.
Can I Share A File Larger Than 1GB In Outlook?
With Outlook, you can only attach files up to 20 MB in your emails. For sharing files more significant than that, it is recommended to compress them or use file-sharing services such as Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox.
Any email service is not the ideal and efficient option to share huge files. While you can bypass the file sharing limit to some extent, you can still not share huge files. We hope the post was easy to understand and you are now able to send large size attachments from Office Outlook.
