How to Send Large Files as Email Attachments

Sending Emails As Attachment

Many email service servers stop you from sending files that are over a particular size. When this problem happens most of the users do not know how to send large files as emails. To send large files through email, you can either upload your attachment to any cloud storage and get a link to email to the recipient or use it as a file sharing service.

Whatever method you decide to use, in the long run, you would not be restricted by size limits and you can decrease the clutter from your inbox too. We are going to show you some easy ways to send large files for free.

1. Google Drive: Use With Gmail

With Gmail, you can send several attachments but they are limited to 25MB and you can receive files of up to 50MB. It makes sense to make use of the in-built Google Drive to send large files. Open up your Gmail account and click the Compose button. Click on the Google Drive icon that is at the bottom of the compose window.

The Insert files using Google Drive window would come up. Choose the files that you want to attach. At the bottom of the page, you can now decide how you want to send the file.

Then click Insert.

Gmail would check to see if your recipients have access to the file. If they do not, it will prompt you to change the sharing settings of your file that is stored in Drive before sending the message. You can set the permissions to prevent the file from getting misused and send them to the selected recipients.

2. OneDrive: For Outlook and Outlook.com

When you try to attach files that are more than 33MB in size, Outlook.com would alert you to upload the files to your OneDrive account. If you follow the prompt instruction, the file would get uploaded to the OneDrive Email attachments folder. The recipient would receive a link to the file instead of the direct file. You can also share a file from your OneDrive account with a limit of 2GB.

Once the file gets uploaded to Onedrive, you can now decide if people can edit the file or only see it.

3. Dropbox: Integrate With Gmail

If you make use of Dropbox, then the Dropbox for Gmail Chrome extension can allow you to send, preview files, and links without having to leave your Gmail window. The extension adds a Dropbox icon to your Gmail compose window. Click the Dropbox icon and select the file from your Dropbox account. A link would get attached to the email message, instead of a file.

As a recipient, you would get rich previews of all Dropbox links that are shared in emails. Just like attachments, you can also use these links to download the files directly from Gmail or you can decide to add it to your Dropbox account.

4. iCloud Mail Drop: Use With Apple Mail

If you want to send large files through email, you can decide to use the iCloud Mail Drop feature. When you send an email that is more than 20MB in size, Mail Drop would kick in automatically. Instead of sending the file through the Apple email server, it would upload the file to iCloud and posts a link or preview to your recipients. The link is not permanent and would expire after 30 days.

If the recipient also has macOS 10.10 or more recent versions, the attachment would quietly auto-download in the background. And if you are sending it to another email provider, the message would contain an indication of the file’s expiration date and a Click to the Download link button.

5. Firefox Send: Use With Any Web Browser

Firefox Send is a very useful option to send large files with people who do not want to depend on Microsoft, Google, or Apple. It allows you to upload and encrypt large files (up to 1GB) to share with anyone online. To use the Firefox Send, you do not have to install a Firefox add-on. Just point your web browser to the Firefox Send homepage and click the Select a file to upload button.

Once the uploading process is finished, Send would create a link that you can then send through email. At a time, you can send a link to 20 recipients. You can also set a password to encrypt the file that you upload. Each link that is created by Send will expire after 24 hours. The file would also get deleted from the Mozilla server and leaves no traces to it.