Compressing an Attachment for E-mail (??)

Stuffit isn't necessary. Select the file you want to compress and CTRL-click or Right-Click (if you have two button mouse) and select the "Create Archive ..." option from the contextual menu. This will create a fully compatible .zip file that can be sent as an attachment. If you want to be sure your attachments will be Windows friendly, then use that option in Entourage (don't remember exactly where it's set.)


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No. Any type of binary file like sound files and image files do not usually compress very much. Although Stuffit may improve the compression somewhat it will not be a significant difference.

Files that contain text will typically provide the greatest savings when compressed. Files that contain all binary data usually do not compress much.

Music and audio files require an enormous amount of digital data for even short time periods. These files typically do not compress well and can be extremely large.

I don't recall but the "encode for any computer" option in Entourage will only result in a .hqx file. Such encoding is not "compressing." In fact a .hqx file will typically be about 1.4 times larger than the source file. However, virtually all mail applications can handle .hqx encoding.

Video files are already compressed, so zipping will not help. The only way to make them smaller is to re-encode the video, with a loss of picture quality. You could spilt the file into pieces, send those, and the recipient could combine them. You could use the split and cat commands in Terminal, or Split&Concat
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~loekjehe/Split&Concat/>

I doubt that you will be able to email an attachment larger than 10MB by your ISP. Some ISPs have a lower limit.

A possible option it to find an on-line storage site where you can upload the file. Then other persons can download the file. I don't use a storage site, but other forum members may can suggest a site, but they cost $. Or do a Google search.

Another option - buy (they are cheap) a flash memory & mail it.

 Cheers, Tom

I doubt that you will be able to email an attachment larger
than 10MB by your ISP. Some ISPs have a lower limit.

True and the OP should also know the attachment encoding process will increase the size of the pre-encoded file by roughly 50% or so. The size of the pre-encoded file can't be more than 6.5 - 7 MB or so in size to get under a 10 MB overall message size limit without any text.

Hi pcbjr,

As Kappy and the other users said, your zipped doc will get bigger when you e-mail it and ISPs have e-mail account storage limits. Texas Mac Man suggested a service to upload your doc and there is just that and it is FREE (i.e., the lite version allows upto 100 MB). The site is yousendit.com. It's a simple three-step process of entering the recipient and your e-mail addresses with a short message, find and upload your file to their server and click the send button. The recipient will get an e-mail with a link to yousendit.com to download your file. There is a time limit that yousendit.com includes in the e-mail message (I think 5 days). I've used this service a few times and it's great.

Hope this helps.

PB Ti 667 (10.3.9), PB G3 Firewire (OS 9.1), PB 12" Mac OS X (10.4.7) Wi-Fi, iPod 3G 15GB

Thanks LilyLC ... I've been looking for a free site like that 🙂 That's awesome!