How To Send 100 Photos In An Email
If you have ever tried to ‘attach’ a bunch of pictures to an email, you have probably bumped into email’s limitations. Most Email will only allow you to send 10 MB’s of attachments, and ‘paperclip’ on 4 attachments at a time.
Those of you who have a Hotmail account can use the free (included) “SkyDrive” feature can get around these limits and send your PowerPoint slideshows and/or multiple images with a few clicks. (Yeah, I know. Bashing Microsoft and Hotmail just got a bit harder to do..)
Sharing pictures with friends and family is now a whole lot easier.
To share multiple photos:
- Click New to create a new email message.
- Type an email address and subject.
- Click Photos, and then click New album.
- Select the photos that you want to create an album with, and then click Open. Hotmail will upload and save the photos to SkyDrive.
- Type a message, and then click Send.
Note: You need to install Microsoft Silverlight to use this feature. This feature is not yet available in all countries or regions.
A short video tutorial is here.
Don’t have a “Windows Live ID” or Hotmail account? You can sign up (free) for one here
Related: Those of you who do not want to do Hotmail/Silverlight may be interested in my How to send big files (updated)
Today’s quote: “It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.” ~ Max Eastman
Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.
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Hotmail Help | Hacker Mastermind Sentenced
Item 1: Not everyone is loving the new Hotmail (called “Wave 4”) and yes, there are a few glitches as well as some improvements. (I love the “sweep” feature myself.) The following link contains some important information and tips (and some “How To”) that, if you are a Hotmail user, I think you’ll find very useful (especially if you email photos!).
Coping with Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4 by Woody Leonhard
Item 2: One of the leaders of a cybercriminal gang that hacked into payment services provider RBS WorldPay and stole $9 million has received a six-year suspended sentence in Russia, according to reports.
That’s right.. suspended sentence.
The crime was – “the scheme was perhaps the most sophisticated and organized computer fraud attack ever conducted” acting U.S. Attorney Sally Yates said.
Viktor Pleshchuk, 28, of St. Petersburg, also received four years of probation and was ordered to pay the equivalent of $8.9 million in restitution for his role in the November 2008 heist.
Blood pressure go up? Read the details here, Prison sentence for RBS hacker suspended in Russia
** Software License Giveaway Drawing Ends Tonight**
The folks at SPAMFighter have generously donated 5 licenses for SPAMFighter Pro to me, to award to my readers.
SPAMFighter is a community-based spam filtering tool for Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Thunderbird that automatically and efficiently filters spam and phishing fraud – keeping it out of your Inbox.
For contest details (and to enter), click here.This drawing closes at midnight (Pacific) so enter now!
* Folks, I use the word “hacker” because it has become a part of our language. But you should know that the term is used incorrectly, and the ‘brilliant kids messing around’ concept is, well, 1980’s and as relevant as disco. A “hacker” – in today’s world – is a criminal using a computer as his ‘burglary tools’.
Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. 
post to jaanix.
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Ladies, please! The right way to send me pics
It seems that not everyone saw my earlier article on the proper way to send me those pictures of yourselves, so I will repeat myself for the sake of being perfectly clear. I will start with an example of what NOT to do.
As this screenshot of my Inbox shows, when you send me your photograph using Facebook, or similar social networking or photosharing site, it looks to me like a phishing scam.. very similar to the phony Hallmark e-Card spams that try to install malware (virus, worm, spyware, etc.).
I very much appreciate the time and trouble you took to send me your photo, but I don’t touch these– except to delete! (So, if that was you Dear Reader, I’m sorry. You’ll have to try again.)
The proper way to send:
1) Write a short note as an e-mail from a legit-looking e-mail address (acd490y663A@badguys.ru is NOT legit-looking. Use your m.jones@real_ISP.com account), and put something rational in the Subject field.
2) Attach your .jpg*. Do NOT send me GIFF’s or PNG’s or PDF’s. I won’t open them.
That’s it. Sending by this method will ensure that I will see you. Tech Paul fans and loyal readers of Tech–for Everyone will know that I will treat your mailings with the utmost respect and privacy.
* More on sending images: Because digital images like .jpg’s (aka JPEG file) can be quite large, you may have trouble e-mailing them. Please see How to send big files (updated). The section specific to digital images is about halfway down.
(Short version: use an image editor – like Paint (found in the Accessories folder) and find the option labeled “resize”; and, “Save As” a JPEG.)
[note: for those of you new to my style of humor, this is an article about cyber-crime. As an Extra Added Bonus, I threw in a troubleshooting tip. To date, no fan has sent me any photos. (please make sympathetic noise here.) 
]
For more on cybercrime in your Inbox, see In These Tough Times, Could You Use Some Extra $$$’s ?
Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix
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How to send big files (updated)
I think a lot of e-mail frustration would be avoided if every e-mailer understood a couple of basic technical facts.. which, when translated from Geek-to-English, and boiled-down to simple sentences, reads: “E-mail is NOT the proper way to send large files.” But, e-mail is what everyone uses, and so, a range of problems and errors occur. This article will tell you how to avoid some of those troubles.
I would like to add, here, that the onus of these errors usually lies at the feet of the Sender, and not you– the recipient.. nor your computer. It is not your fault you cannot Open the attachments, or that the Sender’s transmission got garbled (aka “corrupted”).
Let’s look at the problem:
1) email is NOT meant for transferring large files. Not only do large files tie up bandwidth and clog the storage of e-mail servers, they can present a security risk as well. Because of this, Network Administrators deliberately limit the size of emails and email attachments (the typical cutoff is 1 Megabyte) and simply deny this traffic. Routers and relay servers across the landscape (devices over which your e-mail will travel to get to its destination) have similar barriers in place, so… even if your email service allowed files bigger than 1 MB, the file still probably would not reach you or, wouldn’t reach you ‘correctly’.
2) The proper way to send and receive large files is via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). This is a different network ‘language’ than SMTP/POP3, the email protocols. Using FTP, however, requires the Sender of the large file to set up his machine as an FTP ‘file server’, and ‘host’ the file for access. The recipient’s computer must request, and download, the file from their ‘server’.
Since we average folk need to send big files so rarely, and configuring FTP is above our pay-grade, very few people actually say to themselves, “Someday I’m going to write a large document.. and then I’m going to want to send that document over the Internet to my friends and co-workers.. so I better learn how to turn my computer into a FTP server and expose it to World Wide Web by giving it a domain name.”
That just doesn’t happen; so, let’s forget about FTP for now. What does happen is– we attach our (large) file to an email, just like we’ve attached a hundred others, and then we get annoyed with the recipient for not being able to OPEN a simple attachment. “Just click on it”, we tell them.
So now we’ve identified the problem (or.. at least, the most likely problem); we Senders need to keep our files under 1 Megabyte in size if we want to email them.
Solution #1: Use a ‘zip’ compression tool, like StuffIt or WinZip to shrink the file (for REALLY big files, you can break the document in half.. or thirds.. which most 3rd-party apps can do automatically.)
Windows’ built-in tool is the ‘Compressed Folder’. Right-click your document >Send to >Compressed (zipped) Folder. In the image below, I have just done that to a text file on my Desktop named ‘scam.txt’.
Now a new folder will appear next to your document, and it will have a zippered folder icon.
In my example, the folder’s name is ‘scam.zip’, and as you can see, the zip file’s size is about half that of the original (*your mileage may vary). Please note: there is no need to do this for that particular file; it is quite small enough to email without compression and this example is only to show the steps.. one Megabyte equals one thousand twenty-four Kilobytes.
Attach, and send, the zipped folder. (The folder is “self-extracting”: no special tool is needed to open it.)
*About images: the letters that make up your text (the “t”, the “h”, and the “e” in “the”) makes for very small file sizes; it is (typically) graphics/images that make for large files. The factors that determine how large of a file a picture will be are: image size (Ht x Wdth, and dpi), color ‘depth’, image “quality” (really “compression level”), and file format.
Most of these are adjustable by even the most basic of graphics programs (Paint will let you resize, and choose between formats, for example). When sending a picture via e-mail, “tweak” these options and shrink the file size of the image — do you really need to send a 5″x7″ RAW image, or will a 3 x 5 JPEG (set to “Medium”) work just as well? And remember, your viewer’s screen resolution is only 92 dpi.
* Two more image tips: A JPEG is already compressed; putting it into a zipped folder will not shrink it much more..if at all; and, the GIFF format is the best at compression.
Another e-mail limitation to consider is that each element of the email is treated separately. So, if you Attach three pictures, and each picture is, say, right about 0.9 MBs (for a total of 2.7 MBs) it will sail right through the system.
If two are 0.9, and the third is 1.3, the first two will sail through and the third will fail (usually resulting in an error notification to the Sender). The email will look like it sailed thru, it will have three “paperclips”, the recipient will be able to Open the first two pics, and when they go to Open the third, they will probably just see a little box with a red “X” in it.
And while what I said above is generally true, there is another limit to contend with: the total (adding up the attachments) size of the e-mail can’t exceed a certain limit without causing mischief. In Hotmail this “total limit” is 10 Megabytes, though this will vary from provider to provider.
So if the document you want to send is really LARGE, you may want to consider solution #2…
Solution #2: Use a service to ‘upload’ your large document to, and then send the (generated) hyperlink to your recipient(s). The hyperlink takes the recipient to the service, and ‘downloads’ your document: let the service do all the FTP nonsense.
There are both for-pay and free versions of these file-transfer services, and those of us who rarely run into the file-too-big dilemma will find the free versions adequate; and they generally can handle files up to a Gigabyte (bigger, for a fee).
I recommend either SendThisFile or TransferBigFiles for their simplicity of use, but there others out there.
If someone has sent you a large file and trying to open it causes your email application to freeze and ‘lock up’, use Task Manager to end the program’s (mail client/browser) execution (for instructions, click here) with “End Task”. Then re-launch it and delete the file. This should restore normal operation, but you will have to ask the sender to resend the file.. and explain to them email limitations. (Or, maybe, email them a link to this article?)
To read my e-mail troubleshooting article on broken links (clicking on a link produces no result), click here.
Today’s free link(s): What? Two isn’t enough? Okay. For those of you who do not have a photo manipulation program with which to make your images more e-mail friendly, the best free tool is IrfanView. This is one of my ‘must have’ downloads, and I have recommended it here before.
Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.
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E-mail and large files
I think a lot of e-mail frustration would be avoided if every e-mailer understood a couple of basic technical facts.. which, when translated from Geek-to-English, and boiled-down to simple sentences, reads: “E-mail is NOT the proper way to send large files.” But, e-mail is what everyone uses, and so, a range of problems and errors occur. This article will tell you how to avoid some of those troubles.
I would like to add, here, that the onus of these errors usually lies at the feet of the Sender, and not you– the recipient.. nor your computer. It is not your fault you cannot Open the attachments, or that the Sender’s transmission got garbled (aka “corrupted”).
Let’s look at the problem:
1) email is NOT meant for transferring large files. Not only do large files tie up bandwidth and clog the storage of e-mail servers, they can present a security risk as well. Because of this, Network Administrators deliberately limit the size of emails and email attachments (the typical cutoff is 1 Megabyte) and simply deny this traffic. Routers and relay servers across the landscape (devices over which your e-mail will travel to get to its destination) have similar barriers in place, so… even if your email service allowed files bigger than 1 MB, the file still probably would not reach you or, wouldn’t reach you ‘correctly’.
2) The proper way to send and receive large files is via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). This is a different network ‘language’ than TCP/IP (the ‘language of the Web’, and home networks)… nor is it SMTP/POP3, the email protocols.
Using FTP, however, requires the Sender of the large file to set up his machine as an FTP ‘file server’, and ‘host’ the file for access. The recipient’s computer must request, and download, the file from their ‘server’.
Since we average folk need to send big files so rarely, and configuring FTP is above our pay-grade, very few people actually say to themselves, “Someday I’m going to write a large document.. and then I’m going to want to send that document over the Internet to my friends and co-workers.. so I better learn how to turn my computer into a FTP server and expose it to World Wide Web by giving it a domain name.” That just doesn’t happen; so, let’s forget about FTP for now.
What does happen is we attach our (large) file to an email, just like we’ve attached a hundred others, and then we get mad at the recipient for not being able to OPEN a simple attachment. “Just click on it”, we tell them.
So now we’ve identified the problem (or.. at least, the most likely problem); we Senders need to keep our files under 1 Megabyte in size if we want to email them.
Solution #1: Use a ‘zip’ compression’ tool, like StuffIt or WinZip to shrink the file (for REALLY big files, you can break the document in half.. or thirds.. which most 3rd-party apps do automatically.)
Windows’ built-in tool is the ‘Compressed Folder’. Right-click your document >Send to >Compressed (zipped) Folder. In the image below, I have just done that to a text file on my Desktop named ‘scam.txt’.
Now a new folder will appear next to your document, and it will have a zippered folder icon.
In my example, the folder’s name is ‘scam.zip’, and as you can see, the zip file’s size is about half that of the original (*your mileage may vary). Please note: there is no need to do this for that particular file; it is quite small enough to email without compression and this example is only to show the steps.. one Megabyte equals a thousand Kilobytes.
Attach, and send, the zipped folder. (The folder is “self-extracting”: no special tool is needed to open it.)
*About images: the letters that make up your text (the ‘t’, the ‘h’, and the ‘e’ in ‘the’) makes for very small file sizes; it is (typically) graphics/images that make for large files. The factors that determine how large of a file a picture will be are: image size (Ht x Wdth, and dpi), color ‘depth’, image “quality” (really “compression level”), and file format.
Most of these are adjustable by even the most basic of graphics programs (Paint will let you resize, and choose between formats, for example). When sending a picture via e-mail, “tweak” these options and shrink the file size of the image — do you really need to send a 5″x7″ RAW image, or will a 3 x 5 JPEG (set to “Medium”) work just as well? And remember, your viewer’s screen resolution is only 92 dpi.
** Two more image tips: A JPEG is already compressed; putting it into a zipped folder will not shrink it much more..if at all; and, the GIFF format is the best at compression.
Another e-mail limitation to consider is that each element of the email is treated separately. So, if you Attach three pictures, and each picture is, say, right about 0.9 MBs (for a total of 2.7 MBs) it will sail right through the system.
If two are 0.9, and the third is 1.3, the first two will sail through and the third will fail (usually resulting in an error notification to the Sender). The email will look like it sailed thru, it will have three “paperclips”, the recipient will be able to Open the first two pics, and when they go to Open the third, they will probably just see a little box with a red “X” in it.
And while what I said above is generally true, there is another limit to contend with: the total (adding up the attachments) size of the e-mail can’t exceed a certain limit without causing mischief. In Hotmail this “total limit” is 10 Megabytes, though this will vary from provider to provider.
So if the document you want to send is really LARGE, you may want to consider solution #2…
Solution #2: Use a service to ‘upload’ your large document to, and then send the hyperlink to your recipient(s). The hyperlink takes the recipient to the service, and ‘downloads’ your document. (Let the service do all the FTP nonsense.)
There are both for-pay and free versions if these file-transfer services, and those of us who rarely run into the file-too-big dilemma will find the free versions adequate, and they generally can handle files up to a Gigabyte (bigger, for a fee).
I recommend either SendThisFile or TransferBigFiles for their simplicity of use, but there others out there.
If someone has sent you a large file and trying to open it causes your email application to freeze and ‘lock up’, use Task Manager to end the program’s execution (for instructions, click here) with “End Task”. Then re-launch it and delete the file. This should restore normal operation, but you will have to ask the sender to resend the file.. and explain to them email limitations. (Or, maybe, email them a link to this article?)
To read my e-mail troubleshooting article on broken links (clicking on a link produces no result), click here.
[Addenda: I would like to point out that my description of FTP and TCP/IP was a vast over-simplification. For those of you interested in learning about networking, the place to start is with the protocol ‘stack’ TCP/IP, and the 7-layered “OSI model“.]
Today’s free link(s): What? Two isn’t enough? Okay. For those of you who do not have a photo manipulation program with which to make your images more e-mail friendly, the best free tool is IrfanView. This is one of my ‘must have’ downloads, and I have recommended it here before.
Copyright 2007 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.
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Cannot open attachment…help!
A frustrating error occurs when Windows does not recognize the type of file you are trying to open, that reads “Windows cannot open this file:”
It may help you to understand that what causes this is when the file was created with a program that is not installed on your machine. It does not mean the file is not Open-able.
Today’s topic was inspired by a college professor, who received two writing assignments from students as email attachments. [A brief aside: it is simply amazing what is available to us in the form of the e-classroom. If you have a crazy schedule, and there simple isn’t time to further your education, consider taking online courses. A good place to start looking is your local Junior College.] One student sent him a .mdi file and the other sent him a .docx file. When he tried to open them, he received the message shown above, and asked for my help in opening them.
Tip of the day: Use the Internet to identify attachment file types, and find out what it would take to open them. I mentioned in an earlier article, files are identified by a “dot-three-letters” file “extension” (for a more detailed description, click here). This tells your O/S what program created the file so that it can launch the same program to work with it. I will mention again; the place to go when you receive (or come across) a file extension you simply don’t recognize is a website called FILExt.
The professor had assigned a writing assignment, and since he has Microsoft Office and the lesser-known Word Perfect installed on his machine, he was surprised at his inability to open a text document (and doubly surprised when it happened twice). The second file — the .docx — I easily recognized as the new Word format. The new Microsoft Office 2007 suite has modernized, and uses a XML-based format now, and older versions (Office 97 – 2003) of Word will not recognize, or be able to Open, files of this type.
The solution, in this case was to (somehow) upgrade his Office suite to 2007, or ask the student to re-submit the document using Word 2007’s ability to Save As in the older format. I advised him to download and install the free 60-day trial of Office 2007, and to consider purchasing a license for it. (The download is the full suite; it just has a time-limited license.) By doing this, he would also be able to open the second file. [update: for more on Office 2007, and to download the free conversion toolkit, called a “Compatibility Pack” (for owners of older versions of Office), click here.]
I did not immediately recognize the .mdi file extension, and so (since I had it already open) entered “open .mdi” into Google’s search box. It turns out that the student had — instead of simply Save-ing the document — “printed” it to Word 2003’s ‘virtual printer’, Microsoft Document Image Writer. This tool is usually used in conjunction with a scanner, and allows for OCR. You don’t typically run across too many .mdi files…
The professor took my advice, and was able to open both documents using the newly installed Word 2007.
If you refer back to the error message shown above, you will see that by default Windows offer you a choice; allow it to search online for a way to open the file (this rarely works), or select a program — from the programs you have installed — to use to try to force it open (this also rarely works). It will not hurt you, and there is a chance of success, to go ahead and accept the first option.
And then go to FILExt.
Today’s free link: If you use IM and use multiple services… and you frequently use different computers… you should know about Meebo. Meebo allows you to use a web browser to log into and use AIM, Messenger, Yahoo, and GoogleTalk. Quick, simple, and easy… and nothing to install.
Copyright 2007 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.
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