Microsoft: Attachments Suck, Use SkyDrive Instead

With the average user receiving 15 emails with attachments per day, one would think that companies would have come up with ways to get rid of annoyances and issues caused by attachments. From bouncing emails because of attachment size limitations over sending multiple versions of the same file to storage issues. Most users know from first hand experience that email attachment have limitations.
Microsoft has launched a campaign that aims to convince users that SkyDrive resolves all the core issues and limitations of email attachments. For that, an infographic and website were created. The infographic is backed up with data derived from two studies Microsoft conducted in the past two years.
It lists all the issues and problems that the majority of users run into when sending attachments via email.
- Attachment size to large, which causes the email to bounce back
- Email gets deleted without being opened
- File has been updated before it is opened by the user
- File or email cannot be found anymore
- Updated attachment may get sent back, causing versioning issues, especially if multiple recipients are involved.
Several of the statistics posted are quite interesting:
- On average, people send and receive about 15 emails with attachments daily, which accumulates to over 5000 attachments a year per person.
- 73% of attachment senders run into bounce back problems.
- 53% of people delete 25% of their emails without opening them first which results in 5% of emails getting lost.
- 71% find that they need to update files after they have already sent them, with 25% running into this problem at least once a week.
- 75% of people do not save or organize attachments, resulting in 62% losing files sent to them in attachments
- 44% of documents sent by email go through at least 3 versions before they are final.
Some stats seem awfully high, like the number of attachments per day, or the 73% bounce backs. These issues are however not uncommon in work places, where you may receive that amount of attachments regularly. Even if the count is lower, the underlying issues remain and may need to be addressed.
When I look at my accounts, I have to admit that I do not save email attachments locally, and that I sometimes receive multiple versions of the same file. The bounce back on the other hand was never a problem thanks to my tech background.
Microsoft's solution? The company's cloud hosting service SkyDrive which not only offers larger file sharing but also document editing, collaboration and versioning as well. To further proof the point, Microsoft is pitting SkyDrive against competitive services like Dropbox, Gmail or Google Docs. The result? See for yourself.
Is Microsoft SkyDrive the better way of sending files to other users? What's your take?
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!