Outlook.com file attachment options

The new Outlook.com web email client offers a great way to avoid clogging other people's inbox when sending them large file attachments.

Sign in to your Outlook.com account. 

If you don't have one, you can click here for the get a new Outlook.com web email tutorial. 

Click the Email settings button (see picture) ....

... and choose More mail settings.

Scroll down a bit and click Attachments under the Writing email section.

Usually when you attach a file to an email and send it, the recipient of that email will get the file directly into their inbox. Sometimes it can happen that the file(s) is too big for the intended inbox of that recipient, be it the email providers policy or the recipient just doesn't have enough space left.

In Outlook.com you can choose between the three options on how to handle attachments you are sending.

Always send files using SkyDrive - all the files you are going to attach will first get stored to your SkyDrive and the recipient will receive only the URL link to that file(s), meaning you won't be clogging their inbox.

Always send files as attachments - standard option used basically by the most of emailing clients. Here you send the file directly to the recipients inbox, meaning if the file is large in size, it might be too large for the recipient's inbox.

Let outlook Choose - if the attachment is too large for the Outlook.com to handle the system automatically chooses the SkyDrive option.

Click Save to confirm your changes.

In case you don't now what SkyDrive is or you didn't get to install it yet, you can click here for the How to install and use SkyDrive tutorial.

Let's now see how the Always send files using SkyDrive option looks like when you are sending an email with attachment.

Create a New email.

Enter recipient's email, subject and click Attach files (see picture).

Choose the file from your computer you want to attach.

And the file gets automatically uploaded to your SkyDrive.

I attached a large picture and Outlook decided to shrink it a bit. But I want to send the original image so I chose the Original Photo size (see picture).

You need to wait a bit until the file get's uploaded, how fast depends on the file size and the speed of your Internet connection.

There, my file original image file is now uploaded to my SkyDrive and email is ready to be sent.

And this is how the email with the link to the file I want the recipient to download will look like.

All you need to do now is click Send.

As already said, all the attachments you are sending via SkyDrive are getting stored to you SkyDrive storage.

To take a look if this really is the case, click the Down arrow button next to Outlook (see picture) ....

... and choose SkyDrive.

And here  really is the image I attached as a SkyDrive link.

You could also check the SkyDrive that is attached to your computer, depending on your sync settings it should be there as well sooner or later.