[Annihialator]

I am sorry if this has been covered already but I can't find anything of relevance.

I am getting right fed up with Mac Mail.app. I am trying to send a 2.6MB video clip via email, but as soon as I add it to a message, the email size (in the drafts folder) says it is 3.2MB and cannot send it due to the Apple 3MB limit!

Hello!?!?!? The attatchment is 2.6MB, the text probably only a few kb, so where has the extra 400 odd KB come from?

Any help appreciated.

Edit: Got my maths wrong (too much beer), that would br a 600KB difference!

[geekwagon]

Unfortunately, that is the way that mime encoding (which is used for sending attachments in basically all mail programs) works. Due to the limitations of many older mail transfer agents, you can't send binary data via SMTP without it being Mime-encoded or uuencoded or something. These older mail transfer agents can only accept ASCII data (which is all that email was originally designed to handle) so binary data such as a movie or a .zip file needs to be converted to only use ASCII characters. Because some of the bytes in the files are not in the same range that ASCII allows, those bytes end up needing to be stored in two bytes, which explains your larger size.

I'm having a hard time explaining this clearly. Here's a link that has more information:the heartbreak of attachments

[Mr. Blur]

just to clarify...that 3MB limit is not set by mail.app...it is set by isp's. many use the 5MB limit but apple's .mac service limit is 3mb. which in some ways is a good thing....i personally hate receiving large attachments via email...it is much better "netiquette" to post the file to a web or ftp link and send the link for others to d/l only if they want to.

so...if you are using .mac (or a similar service) the easy (and better) way to get the file to others is to put it in your .mac public folder and let the others know where it is.

[thePurpleGiant]

^^^What they said.

1) All email programs will make your attachments bigger before sending, not just Mail. This is because attachments have to be encoded to send via email, and email programs are clever enough to do it without you even noticing.

2) You can send any sized messages with mail, it's the mail server that sets that limit. You might need an email address other than one from your ISP or .Mac if you plan on sending large attachments frequently.

Hope that clears things up!

[Annihialator]

Many thanks all. I understand now.