Quick reply
Why Outlook caps attachments at 20 MB, what triggers the error message, and the ways to get a heavy file to your recipient anyway.
The email will not go out in Outlook because the attachment exceeds the permitted limit.
Email is still widely used to share files with one or several contacts, through attachments. Handy as that is for small office documents, it gets more complicated with bulky attachments. Let us look at why Outlook caps attachment size, and how to send large attachments in Outlook anyway.
An attachment that is too large in Outlook
Most internet service providers cap the maximum size an attachment can reach. Like the majority of email clients, Outlook limits an attached file to 20 MB. That ceiling can be reached by a single file, or by several files whose combined size goes beyond 20 MB.
If you have tried to send a large file by email in Outlook, or several heavy documents in the same message, the error "The attachment size exceeds the maximum limit" will have appeared on your screen. In that case, your file cannot be sent by email.
What is more, even if your heavy file stays under the 20 MB limit, your recipient may never receive your message: their own provider may apply a lower limit, or their mailbox storage may be full.
How do you send a large attachment in Outlook?
Sending a large attachment in Outlook can turn into a headache.
Getting around the attachment size limit in Outlook is not really achievable with a native feature of the email client.
Other options let you share heavy files without having to send bulky attachments:
- NetExplorer: a professional French service, NetExplorer offers secure online file storage that lets you save, view and share files online with colleagues and outside partners.
- Photo sharing sites: images can reach a considerable size (more than 3 MB per photo), which becomes a real problem when you want to send photos by email. Resizing images brings their weight down. You can also go through a photo sharing site, and then all you need to do is send the share link to your contacts.
- Video sharing sites: even a very short video of a few seconds can be sizeable. As with images, sending a video by email is fairly complicated because of the attachment size limit. You can try compressing the video, or use a file sharing site.
You can also use the NetExplorer for Outlook connector. Once installed, it lets you send attachments by email in Outlook with no limit on size or on the number of attachments.
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