Boost your attachment size with this one weird trick

Office 365 emails can now carry 150MB of baggage, but it may not fit in the overhead bins

Microsoft has increased the maximum attachment size accessible to users of Outlook Web Access (OWA) under Office 365, with 150MB of digital baggage now able to hop aboard emails.

Admins worried about blowing storage allowances and congested networks needn't worry: Microsoft makes it possible to dial permitted total attachment size up and down from 1MB to 150MB, and to set different limits for different groups of users.

We say “total attachment size” because the new limit doesn't mean you can add one 150MB file to a mail. The per-attachment limit is 25MB, because Microsoft knows that transcoding might increase the size of an email and its attachments. Things therefore get a bit funky when you add multiple files of that size. Here's how Microsoft explains it:

“OWA ... restricts the size of the message you can send to 25 percent less than the configured allowed maximum send size … For example, if your maximum allowed send size is set to 100 MB then using OWA you can only send up to 75 MB maximum. Additionally, in OWA, each attachment can be no larger than 25 MB. So with a 100 MB maximum send size, using OWA you could attach and send up to three 25 MB files in a single message.”

And of course there's no guarantee that recipients will be able, or willing, to ingest a mail with 150MB of attachments. The will to do so may even have been blocked by the Office 365 admin in the same company!

All of which probably leaves emailed links to files in cloud storage lockers as perhaps a more reliable way to share big files. ®