Sending files as email attachments may be convenient however there are disadvantages.
- Most email servers limit the size of attachments (on many systems messages greater than 10Mb are likely to fail although the OxMail systems currently support messages upto 50Mb).
- Attachments rapidly use up your mailbox quota - for both sender (Sent Items) and receiver (Inbox)
- Some email addresses, such as department maillists, reject attachments. (e.g. >200kb)
Oxford University - Onedrive sharing
The university's recommended solution is to share the files from your OneDrive storage.
- It is possible to share any file or folder independently
- Files upto 250Gb also entire folders
- Good for collaborative working on shared files
- cannot share anonymously - local users or external email addresses
- difficult to keep track of sharing permissions.
- difficult to remember to disable sharing when no-longer needed.
- Recommendation for file transfer by sending/receiving files is to setup specific folders
- if just sending files to someone create a "Shared" folder and disable the "allow editing" option and share it with the recipient
Move or copy the file into the folder and when the recipient has collected it remove the file again.
- if receiving files from someone setup a "Transfers" folder and enable the "allow editing" option and share it with the sender
Copy the received files into your own folders and remove from Transfers folder
- If sharing with multiple different people create folders for each sharing instance e.g. Shared\Jack and Shared\Jill and set permissions per folder to avoid Jack seeing Jill's files etc.
- finally remember that if someone shares a file/folder with you, you can access it now but you many not be able to in the future (e.g. the sharing permission may be removed or the sharer may leave after which their account is deleted) in which case you should always think in terms of coping any files that you need into your own storage area (unless you are actively collaborating by working on the same files)
(The university's Oxfile service was decommissioned on 19th June 2023)
(The department's webupload service was decommissioned on 11th June 2023)
