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How do I send large attachments by email?

22:52 / 06.08.03

Cure all my ills, people. Shift just under 3MBs of top-quality .pdfage here to there without having to get on and do those shitty-assed things like "copy to CD" and "bother to leave the house" and "fucking pay some fucking money to do somehting you cheap-assed wanker".

23:42 / 06.08.03

I used to send e-mail attachments all the time at work (no, it wasn't chain letter crap, it was stuff for my job) and I'd only start to worry when it went much above 3MB, so you should be OK, assuming that:

-You can both use something, somewhere, other than dial-up

-You have enough disk space on the outgoing and incoming mail servers to handle it -- you should be OK if you're not using hotmail etc.

If you can't do this, you could try zipping/stuffing (Winzip or StuffIt) the file. Depending on its contents, you may be able to bring the filesize down to make a difference. If you can edit the PDF, and it has images, check their storage method -- I think you can have these compressed and that would save you something. If still no good, google yourself some software to "distill" the PDF -- that should cut all the stuff you don't really need in the file (there's likely loads). If you're on a Mac, bonus! You may lose a few bytes as they report size in a funny way and they include the size of the resource fork which (I've been told) is not e-mailed.

00:52 / 07.08.03

You have individual pages that are just under than 3 meg?

01:22 / 07.08.03

Does that seem crazy? The Late Shift was just one page, and it was 5 meg. I thought that was because of its being a huge graphic, essentially...?

I have broadband... but you don't, do you pin? Can you get someone to upload your files on some webspace & I can grab 'em down from there?

09:35 / 07.08.03

How do you send large attachments by email?
Simple! Just attach large files to your emails and send them.
Next question...

09:36 / 07.08.03

Tell me more about zis PDF ...

What was used to make it?

What's in it?

09:39 / 07.08.03

It's too big to get sent. It just crashes my comp. It's stupid.

It was made in Adobe InDesign, and it's of my never-to-be-award-winning zine.

I'll enquire about getting it rehosted.

09:53 / 07.08.03

So it's high res and all that. What is the print size?

10:06 / 07.08.03

It's too big to get sent. It just crashes my comp. It's stupid.

This sounds like it's more a problem with your computer than with the PDF size. I would have thought your ISP would let you send email with a 3 meg attachment - though you should be aware that, due to the encoding, if you email an attachment the size actually increases by about 50%, so if they say "there's a 3 meg limit on attachments" you may not be able to send it.

Here's a thought: Why don't you both get onto some instant messaging system and transfer the file via that? I find ICQ is the best for file transfer.

10:21 / 07.08.03

Good call, Fridge!

Though it may be the quality of the dial-up line that's the problem.

Another option would be to burn it on to CD and take it to your local internet cafe. *Some* web mail providers, e.g. lycos.com, will let you send 5MB attachments, so you could open up a fresh account with one of them and send it. Or you could ask one of your friends to send it from work. You would have to leave the house for all this, but it would be cheap :-)

18:37 / 07.08.03

For MP3s and stuff I end up FTPing them somewhere and telling people to download them themselves. Works better than email, which doesn't tend to like the really big files.

20:47 / 07.08.03

Yahoo groups works OK for that. The recipient has to actually sign up to the group, but then swapping files in the "Files" area is pretty darn easy.

21:45 / 07.08.03

You could use Yahoo Briefcase too - it has a 5mb upload limit, and you don't have to set up a whole group for it. The other person has to have a Yahoo account to get at them, but that's fairly easy.

22:33 / 07.08.03

"I have a large pdf" is, of course, the secret phrase guaranteed to hook you up with an undemanding sugar daddy in London gay bars, _pin. But you knew that all along, I'm sure.

22:52 / 07.08.03

Can your mailbox handle the size of my PDF?

Would you like to experiment with alternative methods of delivery?

23:05 / 07.08.03

You don't happen to be an undemanding sugar daddy who frequents London gay bars, do you Xoc?

12:46 / 08.08.03

No, I'm a toy boy, the oldest in the business. I am too poor to be a sugar daddy, sadly.

22:53 / 08.08.03

On a Mac you can use Stuffit, I'm assuming there's a PC equivalent, to not only compress large files but to then split that still-large-but-not-AS-large file into smaller bits of a predetermined size. It used to be useful when floppy disks were the transportation medium of choice because you can chop one 5Mb file up into five 1Mb files, which can then be reassembled at the other end. It's a not oft used feature I imagine these days but it could be the solution to your problem.