Email is for Messaging … and that’s about it.
One of the most common mistakes people make with their email is thinking of it as a package delivery system. We all have an aunt or grandma who thinks it’s cute to take 400 hundred pictures of her cat, downloading them onto the new computer she got for Christmas, and then sending every single picture in one email…to fifty recipients. This scenario, as most of us can attest, is bad for everyone involved. Chances are, it will be slow to move over the tubes, possibly get blocked by security software, and just as likely as not, won’t be delivered at all.
The truth is, email was designed with one specific purpose in mind: To deliver messages, not packages. Of course, this all changed with the arrival of digital cameras, electronic business cards and *gulp* .PDF files. People started throwing any silly thing they wanted their buddies to see, in an email and sending it off. Sure, it worked fine for a while, but then the attachments got bigger. Then they got bigger. Then they… Well, you get it. A new trend shows that people are even shuffling around music and videos through email!
I suppose it is unavoidable at this point, as business has come to rely on the trafficing of such hefty digital beasts. There is, however, a limit to what your email system will allow. While quite often your internet connection will be more than adequate to handle large file transfer, your email client may not be so prepared. Most email programs, like Outlook, will choke on an attachment if it is over 5 MB in size.
From a professional’s point of view, it’s easy – make your attachments smaller. If you have a lot of pictures to send, perhaps try selecting only a choice few, shrinking their bulk with some editing software, then compressing them for good measure before attaching them to an email. If you have a large document to share with your coworkers, you can upload it to a shared folder on your company’s server, then just send out a link to it. You may also check out a little thing we geeks like to call “FTP.”
