Configure Outlook.com to always, or never, use SkyDrive for attachments

When it comes to sending files via email, users have quite a few options at their disposal to do so. Most - if not all - email providers limit the maximum attachment size per email. It is usually in the 20 Megabyte range but rarely goes above 30 Megabytes or more. While you could send multiple emails if you need to transfer files larger than that to recipients, you could also use other options at your disposal.
When it comes to Microsoft's outlook.com service, users have two options at their disposal in regards to sending file attachments. Files can be attached directly to emails or uploaded to Microsoft's file hosting service SkyDrive instead. The benefit of using SkyDrive is that it enables you to bypass the attachment size per email limit.
So, you upload the files you want to share with the recipients to SkyDrive and outlook.com adds a link to the emails instead that the recipients can click on to download those attachments.
Outlook.com is set to determine on its own whether to use SkyDrive to host attachments or not. It will do so for Office documents and large attachments only. You can however change that behavior so that it is used every time you are sending attachments, or never.
Here is what you need to do to configure SkyDrive either way:
- Open outlook.com and sign in if you have not done so already.
- Click on the settings button at the top right and select more mail settings from the context menu.
- Locate Writing email and click on attachments there.
- This opens the menu that you see on the screenshot above.
You can now configure attachments in the following way:
Big attachments can clog your friends' inboxes. But when you use SkyDrive, you send links to files instead of the files themselves. This makes it easy to share hundreds of files at a time with the people you choose.
- Always send files using SkyDrive.
- Always send files as attachments.
- Let Outlook choose (use SkyDrive for large attachments and Office docs) (default)
Just make your selection here and click on the save button afterwards.
I do not think there is anything wrong with the default setting though, unless you are opposed to the idea of uploading files to SkyDrive to share them with email recipients. One of the reasons for that may be that you cannot set an expiration date for files uploaded this way which means that you may need to do a manual clean up of SkyDrive every now and then to remove old email attachments from the service.
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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!