Email a PDF that's too large to attach

What SendTheStuff will do with a PDF too big to attach

SendTheStuff will put a link in your email where the attachment would have gone. The PDF itself won't pass through the email, so its size won't matter:

• The exact file. SendTheStuff won't compress, flatten or re-save the PDF. Scans stay sharp, small print stays readable, and nothing about the file changes.
• Big files welcome. SendTheStuff will take PDFs up to 5 GB per transfer, free. That's room for a print-ready brochure or a whole year of scanned paperwork.
• Several PDFs in one link. SendTheStuff will carry up to 1,000 files in one transfer, so a pile of documents won't need a pile of emails.
• Any email app. SendTheStuff will give you the link to paste into Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail or Apple Mail. Or SendTheStuff will email up to 10 people for you.
• Gone when it's done. SendTheStuff will keep the link working for 14 days, then delete the PDF. Your cloud storage won't be touched.

Why a PDF gets too large to email

Most PDFs are small. A PDF made straight from a Word document is mostly text, and text takes almost no room. The big ones are nearly always full of pictures.

• Scans. A scanner or a phone scan app saves each page as a photo of the paper. A long contract scanned in color at high resolution can pass 25 MB on its own, where the same pages typed would be tiny.
• Print files. A brochure or a menu sent to a print shop keeps every image at full resolution, plus fonts and color data.
• Portfolios and reports. Every chart, photo or screenshot dropped in adds its full weight, even if it shows up small on the page.

Then the email itself adds weight. Attachments travel as text, which makes them about 33 percent larger on the way. A PDF a little under the cap can still bounce at the recipient's end.

What each email app does with a PDF over the limit

The cap is close to the same everywhere, but what happens next isn't:

• Gmail takes up to 25 MB on a personal account. A bigger PDF is removed and replaced with a Google Drive link, which lives in your Google storage.
• Outlook.com counts the whole email, text included, up to 25 MB. Past that, you send the PDF as a OneDrive link instead.
• Classic Outlook for Windows stops POP and IMAP accounts at 20 MB by default, with this error: "The file you're attaching is bigger than the server allows. Try putting the file in a shared location and sending a link instead."
• Yahoo Mail caps all attachments together at 25 MB.
• Apple Mail offers Mail Drop when the PDF is over your provider's limit, for files up to 5 GB.

If the email goes out but is too big for the recipient's Gmail, the bounce reads "Your message exceeded Google's message size limits." Other providers send their own bounce.

Making a PDF smaller: what each way costs

You can often shrink a PDF enough to attach it. Most methods work the same way underneath: they throw away image detail. That's fine for a menu, and risky for a contract or a drawing someone needs to read closely.

• Preview on a Mac. Open the PDF, choose File > Export, pick Reduce File Size from the Quartz Filter menu, then click Save. Apple warns the result may be of lower quality than the original. Check the small print before you send it.
• Word, Excel or PowerPoint. If you're making the PDF from an Office document, pick Minimum size (publishing online) when you save it. Microsoft suggests this when file size matters more than print quality.
• Scan again, lighter. Black and white or grayscale, at a lower resolution, makes far smaller scans than full color. Most scanner and phone scan apps have both settings.
• Split it. Send a long PDF as several parts, each under the cap. It works, but the recipient has to reassemble it.
• Online compressors. They do the same squeezing on someone else's server. Think twice before uploading a tax return or a signed contract to a site you don't know.

Zipping barely helps. A PDF is already compressed inside. In a test for this guide, PDFs were zipped with standard zip compression at its default level. 9 PDFs installed with common apps, 1.6 MB in all, shrank by 13% together.

These were small PDFs, and large scans weren't part of the test. A PDF just over the limit may squeeze under, but one well over it won't.

A big PDF's options, side by side

Why the usual workarounds fall short

• Cloud links fill your storage. A Drive link uses the 15 GB shared across Drive, Photos, and Gmail, and a OneDrive link uses your OneDrive space. The PDF stays there until you remember to delete it.
• Cloud links can lock people out. If a Drive file stays private, people without a Google Account can't open it.
• Mail Drop is Apple's alone. It needs you signed in to your Apple Account, and its link expires after 30 days.
• Shrinking costs readability. It's the one route that changes the document itself, and the damage lands on the parts people squint at.

Until SendTheStuff launches

Use the link your email app already offers.

Gmail on a computer:

1. Attach the PDF as usual, and Gmail swaps in a Google Drive link by itself. If the PDF is in Drive already, click Insert files using Drive at the bottom of the message instead.
2. When Gmail asks about sharing, pick "Anyone with the link" so the recipient can open it without asking you.

Outlook.com:

1. Select Attach, then Upload and share, and pick the PDF.
2. Select Share link, and the PDF goes in as a OneDrive link, up to 2 GB.

Apple Mail: attach the PDF and accept Mail Drop when Mail offers it.

Yahoo Mail or anything else: upload the PDF to a cloud storage service. Set it so anyone with the link can view it, then paste the link into your message.

Sending several PDFs at once

Email limits count every attachment together. Three PDFs of 10 MB each make 30 MB, which is over the cap even though none is big alone. Gmail measures the total attachment size, and Yahoo adds them up the same way.

You can send them over several emails, or zip them into one file. The zip keeps them together but saves little space, since PDFs are compressed already. A link is the tidy option: one email, every PDF, nothing to reassemble.

What the recipient needs to open it

Nothing special. Every phone and computer can open a PDF in its web browser or a built-in viewer.

• A Drive or OneDrive link opens in the browser, and the recipient downloads the PDF from there.
• A Mail Drop link downloads the PDF straight from iCloud until it expires.

A SendTheStuff link will open a download page with the PDF's name, its size and its expiry date, with nothing to install.

When it doesn't work

• The shrunk PDF is hard to read. It was squeezed too hard. Go back to the original and send it as a link, or scan it again in grayscale.
• The PDF fits, but the email still bounces. The recipient's inbox may be smaller than yours, or the encoding pushed it over. Send a link instead.
• Gmail says "Couldn't send message". The PDF didn't finish uploading to Drive. Your storage may be full, or the connection dropped.
• The recipient can't open your Drive link. It's shared with named people only. Change it to "Anyone with the link" and send the link again.
• Outlook won't attach it at all. Classic Outlook's own limit may be lower than your provider's. Its error tells you to send a link, and that's the fix.