VanS said:
Hello,
I have Outlook 2003 and when I try to email with a large attachment, say
over 2 MB or larger, the email gets stuck in the Outbox yet keeps sending the
same thing over. Today, without realizing it my email list received the same
email 100-200 times. My email list has about 50 addresses in it.
My ISP told me he didn't think it was them, but he thought he heard of a bug
in OUtlook.
Does anyone know anything about this, or how to resolve,
Thanks, God bless,
Van
Not an Outlook bug.
Not a problem with your e-mail provider.
Problem is with YOU.
Just what is the maximum message size quota with your e-mail provider?
And how big is that e-mail that you are sending? No, not how large is
the file you are attaching but how large is the *e-mail* after you
attach the file. All e-mail - and I mean ALL e-mail - is sent as plain
text. HTML is text with tags. For an HTML-formatted e-mail, 2 copies
get set: one for the HTML version and another for the plain text version
(so recipients that don't read HTML can still read your message). RTF
(Rich-Text Format) is text with an attachment containing the formatting
controls. Binary files are encoded into long text strings inside a MIME
part in the body of the message. Encoding from binary to text results
in bloating the size of the e-mail.
Save a draft of your outbound e-mail into the Drafts folder (exit while
composing your e-mail and select to save a draft or hit Ctrl+S to save a
draft at that point). Use the Size column in the Drafts folder to see
how large your e-mail has become after attaching any files to it. Then
go check what is the maximum size that your e-mail provider allows.
Does your e-mail provider allow 50 recipients per e-mail? Their
anti-spam quota might be smaller. Some may allow that per their
documentation but perhaps not for new accounts (i.e., you gain
reputation over several days before they up you from an initial maximum
to the published maximum).
Because the e-mail exceeds the size permitted by your provider, it
likely accepts some, maybe all, of the e-mail but reports an error or
ignores a DELEte command that it gets. So it sits in your Outbox and
gets retried on the next mail poll. Errors from the real mail server
might not make it back to your e-mail client depending on what
anti-virus program you use. Some do not operate as a transparent proxy
(so your e-mail client gets the error). Some operate as a mini-mail
server that accepts the e-mail in its entirety and then interrogates it
before ever starting to transfer it out to the other side. You have to
look at the server status returned to the anti-virus program that was
pretending to be the client to the server (and pretending to be the
server to your e-mail client).
E-mail is not designed to be a file transfer mechanism. There is no
resume. There is no retry. There is no guaranteed delivery. You waste
bandwidth and disk space both locally, on your mail host, and the
recipient's mail host for a large file the recipient may not want. The
recipient may have a quota regarding maximum disk space and wouldn't
appreciate you disabling their account by consuming it all up which
results in other inbound e-mails getting rejected (i.e., the recipient's
mailbox is full). You might have a broadband connection but perhaps the
recipient still has dial-up. Don't be sticking huge files into e-mails.
Store the file in online storage and put a link to it in your e-mail.
Delivery is more likely and the recipient gets a small e-mail at which
time they can decide whether or not to retrieve your file.
Your ISP probably allows many gigabytes of online storage for personal
web pages. Upload your file there and provide a URL link to it. Other
methods (of using online storage), all free, are:
http://www.adrive.com/ (50GB max quota, 2GB max file size)
http://www.driveway.com/ (500MB max file size)
http://www.filefactory.com/ (300MB max file size)
http://www.megashares.com/index.php (10GB max file size)
http://www.rapidupload.com/ (300MB max file size)
http://www.sendspace.com/ (300MB max file size)
http://www.spread-it.com/ (500MB max file size)
http://www.transferbigfiles.com/ (1GB max file size)
http://zshare.net/ (500MB max file size)
http://www.zupload.com/ (500MB max file size)
