When an attachment is too large, the best solution depends on what you are sending. A photo can usually lose bytes through image compression. A scan may need careful readability checks. A long video might be better shared as a cloud link than forced into a very small attachment.
Choose the strategy by file type
| File | Good first move | Do not sacrifice |
|---|---|---|
| Photo | JPEG/WebP quality or sensible dimensions | Faces, labels, useful zoom |
| Scanned PDF | Crop, moderate page resolution, controlled PDF compression | Small text, signatures, stamps |
| Video | Lower bitrate and possibly resolution | Understandable motion and audio |
| Audio | Lower bitrate | Speech intelligibility or music quality |
A send-ready workflow
- Confirm the actual limitCheck the current mail service behavior and whether multiple attachments share the same message limit.
- Set a marginAim below the ceiling. Email transfer and message encoding can add overhead.
- Compress the right representationFor a document, use PDF; for a photo, use an image format; do not turn everything into a screenshot.
- Open the resultCheck the file independently before attaching it. Make sure the recipient will be able to read or play it.
- Use a link when appropriateIf a long high-quality video must remain high quality, a cloud link can be a better delivery method than extreme compression.
Fitabyte Compress processes supported files in the browser and does not require an account. Choose a target based on the delivery limit, then inspect the output. If the file is a scan, use the dedicated scanned-document compression guide.