in this video I'll be demonstrating how to use compression to overcome attachment size limits
in emails
as an example
i'll be using gmail which has a maximum attachment size of twenty five megabytes
i've prepared two scenarios where the size of the attachments
exceed the limits enforced by gmail
in the first scenario i'm looking to send pictures through email
however i have exactly twenty five point one megabytes of pictures
which is slightly over the gmail limit
to get around this i'm going to combined all the pictures into a special compressed file which
will be smaller in size
file compression is included in windows and requires no additional software
to compress files in windows first select all the files you wish to compress
right click one of the selected files
select send to
and then select compressed zipped folder
now that the compression process is completed a file with the extension dot zip has appeared
in the folder
this file should now have a smaller size than the combined total of the pictures
sure enough when i view it in windows
it has a total size of twenty four point nine megabytes whereas we previously had twenty
five point one megabytes for all the photos together
uh... it's important to remember that this file now contains all of the photos we selected
earlier
and if i launch it here
you'll see what i mean they're all listed
keep in mind that what i'm seeing here is actually enhanced by third-party software
but in windows opening a compressed folder
compressed file is the same is opening a folder so you will see the contents with all the photos
much like
what i am seeing right here
at this point you may be wondering about the efficiency of the approach given that we saved
only point two megabytes the pictures i chose to compress were all in the jpg file
format and jpgs by nature are compressed images in fact many multimedia file types are already
compressed significantly
by the time they are produced
on the other hand
text files and executables are usually not so they tend to compress better
at the very least compression reduces the number files of that need to be uploaded to
an email client simplifying the act of moving them around
in this case the recipient would receive only one file and after it is uncompressed on
his side
all the photos will be available and it only took one email
in the second scenario i have significantly more pictures to send
given that their total size
is equal to forty four point one megabytes
i will have to change my approach
rather than compress all photos into one compressed file i will create multiple compressed
files and send multiple emails while i could simply select a subset of the pictures
and create two compressed files via the send to menu i will instead use a compression program
called winrar
winrar can be acquired from rar labs dot com
and is free to evaluate
winrar introduces a new compressed file format represented with the extension rar
it is similar to the zip file but requires winrar to be installed
it has a nice feature that allows raw files to be automatically split into parts which
will be useful in my case
to create a multipart rar file
simply select all the files you wish to compress
right-click any one of them
and select add to archive
this option will appear after winrar has been installed
once
winrar appears
it will ask you for an archive name the archive format compression method and other options
the one we care about at the moment
is split the volumes what this will allow us to do
is instruct winrar
to limit the size of each part in the multipart set
so since winrar requires bytes in this case
split to volumes bytes we will need to use a free online converter
which will accept the friendlier megabyte format and change that into bytes
so i have a site right here which i will put in the description
which will allow me to do just that
so when i enter twenty five megabytes into this site
and click on this button below
it automatically provides me with
the bytes kilobytes gigabytes terabytes right now we only want bytes so i will copy this
and return to winrar
i will provide it with the bytes in the field right here
and click ok
now winrar will start doing its work we simply have to wait
and once it's complete we will have two rar files you can see right here that it is already
talking about part two
we already have two rar files
now that it's complete
i will show you the rar files right here scenario two
part one and part two
now what we can do simply attach each of these rars individually to their own emails
so i have an email open right here in gmail
i will drag the first rar file into it
and i can send it
and simply create a new email
and send part two
and once the person receives these rar files it's really a simple as clicking on any one
of them
and dragging the contents elsewhere
winrar figures out putting them together
and you don't have to worry about that so multiple files but they're treated as one
when they're
finally collected at the end
so those were two scenarios that illustrated how compression could be used to get around
attachment size limits
if you have any questions about what i presented please feel free to leave me a comment i'd
be happy to answer them thanks