FYI

Cheers :)
MATT

EMAIL Essentials

NEW! Organizing Outlook Email our latest ebook. Out now! only $4.95
26 June 2006 - Vol. 4 No. 11
 

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@ Email Message Size Limits

In the last issue we talked about sending photos via email, and the several options available for doing that.  Sending photos (or any file attachments) raises the problem of message size.  Most email services (not the email programs) provided by ISPs have a limit on the size of incoming messages.  This means that your message may be refused delivery and you might get an unhelpful ‘bounce’ message saying that your email could not be delivered.

In this issue we’ll talk about those limits and in next weeks ‘exciting instalment’ we’ll have some suggestions for getting around email size limits.

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Organizing Outlook Email

Organizing Outlook Email is a practical guide to taming the messages that arrive in your Inbox with step-by-step instructions and tips from people who've used Outlook since 1996.

There are all sorts of features in Outlook (Outlook 2003, Outlook 2002 (XP) and Outlook 2000) to help you arrange your email, some obvious, others not so obvious. We'll take you through all the choices with examples and plenty of color images to illustrate (important because we talk about colored flags etc).  Then we'll show you how to get Outlook to do some of that arranging for you.  Outlook Rules are very powerful and you'll be able to harness that power with our step-by-step examples. 

It's the first of our 'Quickie' guides - short ebooks on a focused and practical topic, available at a low price.   Organizing Outlook Email is over 45 pages long with color images, step-by-step instructions, searchable and re-sizable text (easier to read but only US$4.95 for Email Essentials readers.

While the price is low we're keeping our usual subscribers discount for all Access Watch readers giving you a discount on the retail price. Go to http://shop.office-watch.com/ooe/FastTrack.asp .

@ Size of messages

Most email messages are small, at least when there’s just text.  Even a long HTML formatted message with no images or attachments is rarely more than 200kb – which is tiny by today’s standards.

Add an image or other file and that can grow to 1,000 or 2,000kb very quickly (roughly 1MB or 2MB).  Even that should not be a problem these days.

However if you include several files then the email size can grow to a size that becomes a problem for the receiver’s system.  Some files from a digital camera can be 4MB or more and that starts heading into the danger zone.

The size of the message includes the text and the message header, not just the attachments.  Usually the text and header are quite small but it’s worth keeping in mind.  An email attachment near a size limit can be taken ‘over the top’ by the other text in the email.

Generally speaking the file attachment size will match the email attachment size, but this wasn’t always the case.  In the early days of email, attachments used a UUencode system to send attachments with effectively doubled the file size in order to send it. 

These days more efficient encoding systems are used and most people don’t worry about it; and they use the default settings.  For example, Outlook has an option to use UUencode for plain text messages with attachments but the default setting is off and it’s best to leave it that way unless you really need to change it.

@ Maximum Message Size

There is no hard rule for the maximum size of a message that can be accepted by a mail service.  It very much depends on the receiver’s email service – it has nothing to do with the email program settings of either the sender or receiver.  Some ISPs make their limits clearly known (like 10MB for Gmail) while other ISP’s seem to treat this information like a corporate secret.

Usually the size limit applies to both incoming and outgoing messages, though they can vary.  It’s possible that outgoing messages have no limit but incoming messages do.

Rarely an Internet provider sets a limit for the accumulated size of incoming messages over a day, week or month – happily this is a rarity though in one case we have to email attachments just after midnight (their time) in order to make use of a new day’s email limit.   If your email service does this, it’s time to send a complaint letter or switch to another company.

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@ Size of mailbox

Another related possibility is that your large email takes the receiver’s emails above their total mailbox size limit.  For example you send a 7MB email to a mailbox that has only 5MB of free space available – your message will be refused because it can’t fit in the receiver’s available space.

This can happen for people with small mailboxes (common with some of the older free webmail services) who also don’t check their email very often.  People in this situation might consider switching to a more generous service like Google’s Gmail with 2GB plus of email storage.

Generally the receiver gets no warning that an incoming message was refused so you have to send a short email, contact them some other way or wait until the mailbox clears.

@ ‘Bounce’ message

An email from the mail service saying that your email was refused is commonly called a ‘bounce’ message (because your message is being bounced back).  Sadly there’s no common format to these messages and they don’t make a lot of sense to most carbon based life forms.

Here’s an example of one we received last week (with names and domains changed) – we’ve highlighted the parts that are important.

From:  System Administrator

Subject: Undeliverable: Emailing: Orange netting.JPG

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

      Subject:       Emailing: Orange netting.JPG,
Sent:   19-Jun-2006 11:33 AM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

      bruce@freddagg.com on 19-Jun-2006 11:34 AM

            This message is larger than the current system limit or the recipient's mailbox is full.  Create a shorter message body or remove attachments and try sending it again.

            <freddagg.com #5.2.3 smtp;450 5.2.3 Msg Size greater than allowed by Remote Host>

The bounce message isn’t precise about the problem, though we know its something to do with the size of the message.  The second part (after the SMTP error code) says that the message size is too big but the earlier sentence suggests it could be either the message size or the mailbox is full. 

Typically the bounce message isn’t too helpful, it would be nice if the email stated the size limit for incoming messages (that would be a courtesy for both senders and receivers) but it rarely happens.

Again, this is the message sent back to the sender.  The receiver (ie owner of the mailbox) doesn’t know that a message was refused delivery to his/her mailbox.

(In this case we called the receiver, who confirmed that his mailbox was clear so we resent the message with a smaller attachment).

@ Rule of Thumb

As a rule of thumb, any message less than 10MB should be OK to send.  That’s the limit for Gmail and, as a result, it is becoming widely accepted by other email services.

But 10MB can be too large for some receiver’s email services.  In the example above we still don’t know the limit but it seems to be around 6-7MB.

@ What is the limit?

The obvious thing to do is ask the receiver what the limit is for incoming messages on their mail account.  Sadly most people don’t know and find it hard to get an answer from their email service, or perhaps they could not be bothered to find out.

Even worse you’ll get a nonsensical answer.  We’ve been told ‘the limit is 1GB’ which is really the total mailbox size not the individual incoming message limit.

You can try to investigate for yourself if the email address is a common domain – for example if the receiver’s address is @lycos.com you can go to that web site and surf around.  (the answer is 5MB with a 125MB total mailbox size depending on the type of account, and there’s no way to tell that from the email address alone.  Outgoing emails seem limited to 5MB, no mention of an incoming size limit)

@ Know thy message limit

There’s nothing much that you can do about other people’s ignorance but you can find out the answer for your correspondents.

Go to the support site for your email service (or ISP if they supply your mailbox as well) and find out the limits:

• on your mailbox (ie maximum mailbox size)
• size limit for incoming email messages
• size limit for outgoing email messages
• any other limits 

If those limits aren’t published then contact the service and ask for clarification.  Ideally get it in writing/email because often the phone support people don’t know and will blow you off with the wrong answer or just a guess.

Next week we’ll talk about options for getting your message past a size limitation

Talk Email

We love to hear from our readers. Feel free to write to us with your experiences, questions, gripes and loves about all things email. Send mail to talkemail@office-watch.com - All messages are kept confidential.  We regret that the volume of mail and the limit of 24 hours in each day mean that we cannot reply to individual messages.

This copy of Email Essentials was sent directly to: matthew_dell@yahoo.com.au
Your email address is only used to send this newsletter, we never sell, rent or give-away your personal info, click here for details.

You can join, leave or change address from our Readers Info with personalized links plus info on redistribution, privacy, making comments, legal mumbo-jumbo and more.  Back issues also available.
Email to join : WEE@office-watch.com  To leave see bottom line of this issue or click here

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Email Essentials

Editor-in-Chief: Peter Deegan

Copyright (c) 2006 Office Watch. All rights reserved. ISSN 1448-8655
--------------------------

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This email is brought to you on behalf of the Mulligrubs - Milton Ulladulla Internet & Computers Users Group
http://mulligrubs.shoalhaven.info/
The Mulligrubs meet on the last Thursday of each month at the Ulladulla CTC - Top of the Town Complex, Ulladulla NSW 2539
Send comments, suggestions, or questions about this newsletter to mulligroup@miltonulladulla.com
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All names and addresses will be kept confidential and will never be sold or used for any other purpose than forwarding of this newsletter

Thought you might be interested in this newsletter plus the following one about message sizes which ties in nicely with recent discussions at the group

See you next week (not this week)
Cheers
MATT

EMAIL Essentials

NEW! Organizing Outlook Email our latest ebook. Out now! only $4.95
21 June 2006 - Vol. 4 No. 10
 

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@ Sending pictures via email

It’s easy to send photos via email, with several options available for doing this, but there are some things to keep in mind when doing it.

In this issue we’ll cover the basics and also some of the issues you need to keep in mind.  In Office Watch newsletters we try to go beyond the usual fare and tell you about some of the day-to-day practicalities as well.

Where possible we’ll keep the instructions generic since the same or similar functions should be available in any reasonable email client.  Check the help files in your program if you need specific instructions.

@ Sending a Photo

You have a photo on your computer, from a digital camera and you want to email to someone.

There are two choices for doing that:

1. Send the photo as an attachment to an email.  It’ll show up as an icon at the top of the email for the receiver to click and open in their picture viewer.  This is the most common option.
2. Embed the photo into a HTML formatted message so it appears in the text of the message just like a photo in a newspaper article.  This looks nicer for people who want to read the message and not necessarily work with the photo file.  But there are compatibility issues to keep in mind.

Whichever way you choose, you need to keep an eye on the overall size of the message.  With higher resolution cameras available it’s easy to go over the recipient’s limit for incoming messages.

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@ Photo as an attachment

This is the easy option.  Create your email then add the photo/s as an attachment.  In Outlook use either Insert | File or use the paperclip icon on the toolbar.

The attached files will appear as a list, usually above the message text with a small icon, the file name and file size.  Note the file size of the attachment because that can be important.

Another option is to choose the file in Explorer, right-click on the menu and choose Send To | Mail Recipient – this should open a new email message in your default email program.  Depending on your computer setup you may get an option to compress the images to a smaller file size for sending.

If the picture or other file came to you in an email you can pass that file along in an outgoing message.  With most email programs you should be able to drag and drop and attachment from another email into the message you’re sending out.  Or click Forward for the email that has the attachment then change the From, Subject  and message text (this only works if the email program supports forwarding including the attachment, some drop the attachment).

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@ Photo in the message

You can embed the image into the message itself as opposed to an attachment or linking to a picture on a web site.  To do this you need to send a richly formatted (HTML) message – plain text won’t work.  Most email programs will let you do this but the formatting options differ a lot.

In Outlook choose Insert | Picture | from File – this will insert the picture into the message itself.  It might be way too large for the message but that’s easily fixed.

Tip: this works best if you use MS Word as your email editor within Outlook.  This is the default but you can check at Tools | Options | Mail Format.

To change the dimensions of the image click on the black box in one corner of the image and drag it towards the center.  This will shrink the visible image in size without changing the overall proportions.

If you’re a little familiar with Word then you’ll find all the standard picture options are available like cropping and resizing from the Picture toolbar.

Right-click on the image and choose Format Picture to see some useful options:

• Size – sometimes the image you’ve imported is really big and its hard to shrink it by dragging.  The Size dialog helps you bring it back into a workable form.  Change the Scale proportion to reduce the size of the image, make sure the ‘Lock aspect ratio’ is checked so both the height and width scales stay in sync.
• Layout – this lets you position the image and let the text flow around the image.  A common setting is to choose Square and Right to put the image on the right side of the message window with text flowing around it on the left.
• Picture | Compress – this is essential for any email with images.  There’s little point in sending a 2-3MB plus image when you’ve reduce the dimensions to a much smaller form.  The Compress option will shrink the file size of the image you send without affecting the file saved on your computer.  We generally choose ‘All pictures’ , ‘Web/Screen’ resolution.  ‘Compress Pictures’ and ‘Delete cropped areas of pictures’ leave checked, it doesn’t matter if there are no cropped areas or if the images were compressed before.

Peter and Phil use this method to create travel journals when they are away.  Friends and family ‘stranded’ at home get a message about the trip complete with photos to accompany the story. 

Tip: if you have some friends or family without email, arrange with a friend to print out the message and post a copy to the email deprived.

If your email program doesn’t seem to support a lot of picture formatting you have the option to write the message in Microsoft Word or other word-processing program.  When it’s finished, copy the document and paste it into a new email message.  The formatting should be retained (though your mileage may vary).

Be careful when formatting your message because you can’t assume that the receiver has the same viewable message size that you do.  In particular a narrow email window can squeeze the text and wrapped images so the whole effect is spoiled.  The right-side reading pane in Outlook is a good example of this.  Before sending your message try adjusting the window size narrow and wide to make sure it looks OK in a variety of sizes (of course you can go to extremes at both ends).

@ Link to a web site

For the sake of completeness there are other options as well which are either not used much by individuals or beyond the scope of Email Essentials.

You could post the images to a web site and link from your email to those images.  These days that usually means the receiver will have to explicitly permit the linked images to be downloaded.

There are also plenty of photo sharing sites around where you can upload images and make them available from a web site. 

However you’re choosing to send your pictures, there’s always the important question of message size – a topic for the next issue of Email Essentials.

Talk Email

We love to hear from our readers. Feel free to write to us with your experiences, questions, gripes and loves about all things email. Send mail to talkemail@office-watch.com - All messages are kept confidential.  We regret that the volume of mail and the limit of 24 hours in each day mean that we cannot reply to individual messages.

This copy of Email Essentials was sent directly to: matthew_dell@yahoo.com.au
Your email address is only used to send this newsletter, we never sell, rent or give-away your personal info, click here for details.

You can join, leave or change address from our Readers Info with personalized links plus info on redistribution, privacy, making comments, legal mumbo-jumbo and more.  Back issues also available.
Email to join : WEE@office-watch.com  To leave see bottom line of this issue or click here

We've started a gradual change from our woodyswatch.com domain to office-watch.com and you'll see links changing over time. If you want to prepare for the future we ask that you add office-watch.com to the 'white' or 'safe senders' list in your anti-spam filter.

Email Essentials

Editor-in-Chief: Peter Deegan

Copyright (c) 2006 Office Watch. All rights reserved. ISSN 1448-8655

---------------
Contact Information
This email is brought to you on behalf of the Mulligrubs - Milton Ulladulla Internet & Computers Users Group
http://mulligrubs.shoalhaven.info/
The Mulligrubs meet on the last Thursday of each month at the Ulladulla CTC - Top of the Town Complex, Ulladulla NSW 2539
Send comments, suggestions, or questions about this newsletter to mulligroup@miltonulladulla.com
You can subscribe or unsubscribe from this discussion group at any time.
Simply send a request to mulligroup@miltonulladulla.com
All names and addresses will be kept confidential and will never be sold or used for any other purpose than forwarding of this newsletter

Hi all
You will remember at our last meeting there was some discussion about storing email whilst on holiday
Philip has done some research for us all - see below
Cheers
MATT

----
Contact Information
This email is brought to you on behalf of the Mulligrubs - Milton Ulladulla Internet & Computers Users Group
http://mulligrubs.shoalhaven.info/
The Mulligrubs meet on the last Thursday of each month at the Ulladulla CTC - Top of the Town Complex, Ulladulla NSW 2539
Send comments, suggestions, or questions about this newsletter to mulligroup@miltonulladulla.com
You can subscribe or unsubscribe from this discussion group at any time.
Simply send a request to mulligroup@miltonulladulla.com
All names and addresses will be kept confidential and will never be sold or used for any other purpose than forwarding of this newsletter

A group of kindergartners were trying very hard to become accustomed
to the first grade. The biggest hurdle they faced was that the teacher
insisted on NO baby talk!
"You need to use 'Big People' words," she was always reminding them.
She asked Chris what he had done over the weekend.
"I went to visit my Nana."
"No, you went to visit your GRANDMOTHER. Use Big People' words!"
She then asked Mitchell what he had done. "I took a ride on a choo choo."
She said "No, you took a ride on a TRAIN. You must remember to use
"Big People' words."
She then asked little Zach what he had done.
"I read a book," he replied.
"That's WONDERFUL!" the teacher said "What book did you read?"
Zach thought real hard about it, then puffed out his chest with great
pride, and said, "Winnie the SHIT."

Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com

This is sexist and vulgar and as such is quite funny    After the birth of her sixth child, Jane decided that she should have some  cosmetic surgery "down below" to restore herself to her former youthful glory because her bomb doors were dangling a bit too low and looked like a ripped out fireplace.  Time and children had taken its toll and she reckoned that, with six children now being the limit, she'd tidy things with a nip here and a tuck there so it looked more like a piggy bank slot rather than a badly packed kebab.  Following the operation she awoke from her anaesthetic to find three roses at the end of the bed.  "Who are these from?" she asked the nurse, "They're very nice but I'm a bit confused as to why I've received them."  "Well" said the nurse, "The first is from the surgeon - the operation went so well and you were such a model patient that he wanted to say thanks."  "Ahhh, that's really nice" said Jane.  "The second is from your husband - he's delighted the operation was such a success that he can't wait to get you home. Apparently it'll be the first time he's touched the sides for years and he's very excited!"  "Brilliant!" said Jane. "And the third?"  "That's from Eric, a patient in the burns unit," said the nurse. "He just wanted to say thanks for his new ears."   

FROM THE GUY WHO WRITES THE DILBERT CARTOONS

As a rule, I don’t like to laugh at the misfortune of others. The exception to that rule is if it’s really, really funny.

Did you see the Reuters story about the man that jumped into a lion’s habitat at the Kiev zoo and yelled “God will save me, if he exists”?
One of the lions – apparently an atheist – mauled him to death.

You might assume that the lion wanted to eat him. But I think the lion just wanted to shut him up.
And when you are a lion, you don’t have many tools. Here is the complete list of lion functions:

-         Napping
-         Killing
-         Eating
-         Pooping
-         Fornicating

There’s only one thing on the list that was guaranteed to make the guy shut up, although that last one might have gotten him to change the subject to something more along the lines of “Nooo! Please! I was saving myself for the monkey habitat!”

This story presents more questions than answers. For example, was the guy a true believer trying to prove his faith, or was he an atheist that was tired of no one understanding his arguments? If he was a believer, was his faith too weak? Or was he unlucky and caught God on a break? Maybe God just turned to one of his cherubs and muttered something like “I don’t roll like that,” because it seemed funny. If he did, the cherub would not laugh, because cherubs are basically babies with wings. So God would either have to resort to a poop joke or a miracle to make that baby laugh.

All we can hope is that people learn something from this tragedy. For example, the next time that a believer jumps into the lion habitat, he should yell “If God exists, he will order this lion to kill me!” That way, everyone wins.

http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

Here is the report from Philip on our last meeting
Details have gone into the Times as well
Remember no meeting this month - 2 in July
Cheers
MATT