Become a Better Correspondent - Take Control of Apple Mail (1.0) - page 84

able storage on your device, and while iOS can display many file types natively,
many others can be displayed only on a computer.
• One or two smallish attachments may be fine, but when attachments get up
in the multi-megabyte range or higher, that uses a lot of storage space on my
devices and eats into my IMAP storage quota.
• Most email servers have strict limits on the sizes of attachments (iCloud's limit,
for example, is 20 MB). If you happen to go over that size, Mail tries to send the
message but fails, eventually displaying an error message.
• Larger messages take longer for you to send and the recipient to download.
• As a recipient, I generally dislike having to deal with attachments, so I try to ex-
tend my recipients the courtesy of not having to either.
Now then. The world will not come to an end if you email a friend of yours a 100 KB PDF
document. However, if you're in the habit of emailing files frequently , emailing large files,
or emailing lots of files in a single message, I'd like to suggest that you stop doing that and
adopt an alternative approach that's better for you—and better for your recipients.
What I recommend is putting the files you want to send in a cloud-based storage system
such as Dropbox , Box , or Microsoft OneDrive (née SkyDrive)—which is normally as simple
as dragging the file to another folder on your Mac—sharing a link to that file, and emailing
your recipient the link. All that is simpler and quicker to do than it is to write about, but if you
want an even faster and more automatic approach, pick up CargoLifter , a Mail plug-in that
automates the entire process. With CargoLifter, you drag a file into a Mail message and send
it as usual, but behind the scenes, the file is moved into your Dropbox (or any of numerous
other cloud services) and a link to the file inserted in the message. Easy.
All that said, if for any reason you can't or aren't willing to email links instead of actual files,
at least meet your recipient halfway by following these tips.
On a Mac:
• Always include file extensions: Extensions at the end of a file's name (like
.doc or .pdf) never hurt, and they often help (especially when sending to
someone on another computing platform, but even when your recipient is a Mac
user). To make sure a file has an extension before you attach it, select it in the
Finder, choose File > Get Info, and look in the Name & Extension section. It
doesn't matter if a particular file has Hide Extension checked; as long as the ex-
tension exists, it comes through on the recipient's end.