Now you know how to talk to cousin Jane about using BCC and sending chain letters, but you're cringing at the thought of downloading another huge attachment-laden email while you're on vacation. Let's look at the issues with email attachments:

3. Huge attachments. Unless you're using FiOS, which has no limits on the size of incoming attachments, most internet service providers restrict how big the messages you receive can be.

• If an attachment is too big, it can get bounced back to the sender with a cryptic message saying it was undeliverable, and now cousin Jane may think she doesn't have the right email address for you anymore.
• If you get many large attachments in a short period of time and you're not on FiOS or another service that has a generous mailbox quota, those attachments can take up all your room and cause all the mail you receive from everyone to get bounced back to its sender.
• If you go out of town and check your mail on a dial-up connection, you will spend all day and night downloading those 10 meg attachments and never be able to hit the beach.

Solution - Put it on the web: If you're sending someone a funny video, chances are very good that you can find that video already hosted at YouTube.com. Hit the site and do a search. If you don't find it, uploading a video to YouTube couldn't be easier; just make an account, hit the "Upload video" button, and go. Once it's uploaded, the site will give you the link you can use to share it with all your friends.

If you want to share large pictures, instead of emailing them, host them on a site like Flickr, Photobucket (both require registration), or TinyPic (no registration required). They are all very simple services to use: just like a camera, you point and click. Once you upload your images, merely copy and paste the location to your email message, and your recipients can go look at your excellent pictures at their leisure.

If you really do need to send an attachment via email, keep it small.  Try to keep attachments under one megabyte, and let the recipient know ahead of time that they're receiving something large.

So with these three tips on BCC, chain letters, and email attachments, you and Jane will be well on the way to being to politest emailers in the family.  Have your own pointers or pet peeves?  Share them with me in the comments!

Posted by Dee | tagged: netiquette