Stupid Simple Mac Tips #37: No, That File Isn’t Too Large for Email!
Have you ever struggled to get a large file from you to someone else?
Quite common is running into the limitations of your email provider.
You’ve got a big video file or a mega-PDF file that is bigger than the 50MB allowed by office 365. Or maybe you have a handful of these large files, and you end up sending an individual email per file.
What a dreadful waste of time that can be!
Don’t sweat it—read this Stupid Simple Mac Tip and learn how to send those big files:
Leverage the Cloud storage sharing features
Save your file to a cloud service and share the link!
There are many popular cloud storage services available.
Our favorite, which over 70% of our client use, is Box. Other popular ones with Mas users are Google Drive or Dropbox. And OneDrive is tempting for many – though we don’t recommend it yet for a handful of reasons.
The Magic
The magic trick here is that since the files are already stored up in the cloud, you can send the recipient a link to that file without having to send the actual file. This has many benefits, including:
- Faster send. The email goes out immediately since the link points to the file online, and you don’t need to upload the file itself.
- More security – Most of these services allow you to password protect the file, as well as set an expiration date. Plus, the file itself is NOT sent via email.
- Check the box that says ‘Show website icAdditional permissions. Want them to view but not download the file? How about view but not edit? You’ve got options not accessible when emailing a file.
- No file limit. You can link to three Gigabyte files if you want, the email size is the same.
- Send folders. Instead of sending links to 5 individual files, you can put the files in one folder and just share a link to the folder itself.
- Keep up to date. This is my favorite. Since you are linking to the file in the cloud, you can send the email, make changes to the file, and when you hit save, and the recipient opens the file, later on, they will get the most current version of the file. Had a typo or last-minute change after you sent the email? No need re-send an awkward email saying, “use this file instead, it’s the latest, ignore the previous one!”
Convinced? Here’s how to do it for the three most popular services:
Box
- Creating Shared Links – https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043697094-Creating-Shared-Links
Dropbox
- Create and share Dropbox links with view-only access – https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/view-only-access
- How to share files or folders in Dropbox – https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/share-file-or-folder
Google Drive
- Share files from Google Drive – https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2494822?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
I hope you’ll start breaking the archaic method of emailing files and that you’ll start using this far superior way :)
