Mail attachments don't reach me

[steveHG]

I;ve found quite recently that any "large" mail attachments don't reach me. I've checked junk, spam etc and nothing in there. It seems to happen with PDFs but may well affect other file types. They don't have to be very big either tho' I haven't checked sizes exactly. I've failed to receive some very important documents recently so don't feel I can trust the system anymore. Neither I nor the sender get any notification this has happened. 

The same problem seems to be happening both on Webmail and the Apple email app. 

Is there some limit I don't know about or anything else else I can do before I decide to leave this unreliable system? Many thanks. Steve

[Gondola]

Looks like a plan. But I don't see an obvious reason for not receiving a 1.5MB attachment.

I remember when I started taking digital photographs that were each 2MB and I could reliably send batches of 6 full resolution images by email for my project files. Now my digital photographs are all in excess of 20MB. Ones for ultra hi-res printing are substantially larger and would never ever be capable of sending via a residential email service.  

[steveHG]

Thanks for this. I can't obviously check the size of the message that failed to reach me, but the final size of the file that was sent to me was only around 1.5Mb. I did finally send all the files I needed to together in one message (actually by mistake!) via Gmail and they all  went through! I'll plan to use Talktalk (at least until my subscription runs out) for short messages and other means for any "large" attachments.  

[Gondola]

Just a tip that 25MB is relatively large. Gmail also has a 25MB attachment size limit. TalkTalk Mail is comparable to other email services in this regard.

I'll give you a few tips about mail sending.

In TalkTalk Mail Settings there's a Show Message Size option. So if you want to know the total message size before sending then use this option and save a draft of the message with attachments and you'll see in the Drafts folder how big the message is.

A message of 25MB size will be sent. But you don't know until testing end to end if there's somewhere in the message delivery chain that cannot handle that size of message. If some intermediate MX server drops the message then the originator doesn't always get a bounceback notification. This is not under TalkTalk's control which is why email is and always has been a best-efforts endeavour to get messages delivered.

When I last tested a couple of years ago from TalkTalk Mail to another mail service with a different ISP I found that messages over 16MB were not getting delivered. Hence my pragmatic advice to use Cloud Sharing for proposed attachments over 12MB. Cloud sharing services like Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive etc are commonplace and not difficult to use at all.

[steveHG]

Many thanks for this Gondola. I have to say a limit of 25Mb and (and a working limit of 12Mb) seem very small if not positively stingy. This about the size of one smallish jpeg I think?  I wonder how the likes of GMAIL (and other email providers for all I know) can manage much larger file sizes? I can see how putting very large files in the Cloud and sending links to the receiver (tho' incredibly convoluted and beyond many people's capabilities) might work for me as a sender, but how would  you expect everybody sending you an attachment (about which you won't be aware of sizes etc) to do the same thing? Am I alone in thinking this? 

What makes it worse is that no message goes back to the sender saying the message limit has been exceeded - it simply doesn't send it. I find that extraordinary. Incidentally how do you calculate a message size before sending it?

Many thanks again

Steve 

[Gondola]

Just FYI the total message size for TalkTalk Mail is 25MB. However that does not guarantee the end to end sending and receiving chain is going to handle that size of message. Personally, I'd upload anything larger than 12MB to shared cloud storage and send a secure sharing link by email.

[steveHG]

Apols, it just seems to be not receiving (not very) large files. Pl ignore last post. Thanks

[steveHG]

Just to add that Mail doesn't allow me to SEND or Receive any attachments. Seems to apply to all file types e.g. Word docs. PDFs tho' it does pick up email links. Must be something wrong here!?