Small Business

Send Larger File Attachments Using Microsoft Outlook 2010

By Dave Johnson

Updated on: August 16, 2010 / 1:12 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

Despite the rise of online storage solutions, e-mail remains the most common way to exchange files. But what happens when you try to send a large attachment and Outlook balks? We've told you about any number of workarounds, but here's a new one: You can modify Outlook to send larger attachments.

I know: it sounds sort of like the way Kirk reprogrammed the Kobayashi Maru test. But as gHacks points out, you can make a simple change to the registry to force Outlook to accept attachments of any size, not the hard-coded 20MB it works with out of the box.

To modify Outlook, do this:

Open the registry (Click Start and type Regedit in the search box).
Navigate to this key: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice14.0OutlookPreferences
Right-click a blank space on the right. Choose New, DWORD (32-bit).
Name the entry MaximumAttachmentSize.
Double click MaximumAttachmentSize and enter a new value. Entering 0 removes any attachment limit from Outlook.

Of course, this only prevents Outlook from blocking large attachments -- your network and ISP might impose restrictions of its own. But if Outlook is artificially limiting attachments below the limit of your network or ISP, this is a quick fix for that problem.

Want a simpler solution? Of course, you could also use drop.io to enable massive 100MB attachments without messing around with the registry.

Dave Johnson was employed by Microsoft Corporation at the time this article was written.

Photo by Luz