Mail Drop Only Worked Once

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Level 1

61 points

Mail Drop Only Worked Once

After the big storm here in Cali I took some great videos of our creek, and wanted to share with some friends. The first eMail I sent went great, I wrote my message and inserted a 61MB video at the end, when I hit send it said (something like) “This attachment may be too large, do you want to use iCloud Mail Drop?” I said yes and my friend was able to download and view the video. Cool, let’s do that some more! Next friend I go to send the video, when I hit insert video, it compresses my beautiful 4K/24/HDR/DV 61MB file into a 2MB POS (that is not a technical term). No questions at all, just compresses and sends the file.

How can I get iOS & iPadOS to use Mail Drop for large files and not compress them instead? Both my iPhone 13 Pro / iOS 15.1 & iPad Pro 11 / iPadOS 15.1 do the same thing. Is it not supposed to offer Mail Drop for files larger than 20 or 25 MB?

Thanks for your help!

iPad Pro, iPadOS 15

Posted on Oct 27, 2021 10:12 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

muguy

Level 10

82,363 points

Oct 28, 2021 8:22 PM in response to A07570

Make sure that mail drop is active on whichever account you select to use

Mail > Preferences > Accounts on a Mac

On you iDevice, it should display an option to use maildrop when you try to send

Review this info about limits: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203093

And, an observation. If I compose a message in mail and select the video from my album it compresses. If I select the video from photos and share it to email, it will send an uncompressed version. There's probably a mail setting somewhere I'm not seeing, or a mistake in the software.

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Answer 2

Oct 28, 2021 4:39 PM in response to A07570

Greetings, A07570.

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities. We can understand why you’d want to resolve the issue with Mail Drop not sending messages.

Are you able to send the message to the first contact a second time? We ask, because “If you send an email with large attachments, it might be returned by the recipient’s email service if your email exceeds the size limit set by that service.” Add an email attachment in Mail on iCloud.com

We hope this helps! Thanks for being a part of the community.

Sincerely.

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Answer 3

A07570 Author

Level 1

61 points

Oct 28, 2021 8:10 PM in response to Nicholas_B2

Thanks for your reply. I have tried sending another large attachment to the original recipient, and no, the file is now compressed going there as well. I am not offered the Mail Drop option. I should also mention that I am not using an iCloud eMail account, but I did not think that was a requirement of Mail Drop. It seems the link you provided assumes an iCloud account. I do use iCloud storage and backup.

Thanks again for your help

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Answer 4

A07570 Author

Level 1

61 points

Oct 28, 2021 9:33 PM in response to muguy

“And, an observation. If I compose a message in mail and select the video from my album it compresses. If I select the video from photos and share it to email, it will send an uncompressed version.”

This is it! The first time I sent the video I must have done it from the Photos app, from then on I’ve been trying from the eMail client. While not totally convenient, I can work with this. To get the Mail Drop option, send eMail from the Photos App.

It does seem you shouldn’t have to use this workaround, but at least it’s a way to make it work.

Thanks for your ‘observation’!

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Mail Drop Only Worked Once

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