How to Attach a Folder in Outlook Email

How to attach Explorer folders to Outlook emails?

by | Jul 24, 2020 | How-to's

Attaching Explorer folders is not supported by MS Outlook.

When trying to attach a folder to an Outlook email, you get this:

Yes this is right, but this was before Attach2Cloud!

Thanks to Attach2Cloud, you can now drag and drop Explorer folders to your Outlook emails!

Now, you are probably wondering what happens when dragging and dropping a folder to Outlook.

Well, let's have a look together.
Let's start with a simple case, a folder with 3 files:

Dragging and dropping a folder to an Outlook email.

Let's create a new email and simply drag and drop this folder to our email:

The dropped folder is accepted by Outlook with no question asked, and is attached to our email as a Zip file:

OK, this was with a small folder.

Now, what about a 1 GB folder with more than 3,000 files?

No problem, see, we have one. Let's try to drag and drop it to our email:

Dragging and dropping a very large (1 GB) folder to an Outlook email.

Let's drag and drop this 1 GB file to our email.

A friendly confirmation dialog is displayed:

Once this dialog validated, the dropped folder and its 3,000 files and folders are automatically compressed into a Zip file:

And the Zip file is then attached to our email:

How can this very large Zip file (several hundreds of MB) be attached to an Outlook email?

Well, this is the Attach2cloud magic at work.
Did you notice this little picto added to the attached file icon?

This means that attaching this file would result in exceeding the Outlook maximum allowed email size.

Without Attach2cloud, this file could not be attached to our email.
We would have gotten this error when attaching it:

But, thanks to Attach2Cloud, Outlook did not raise any error when this file was attached to your email.

Of course, there is a trick here:

This very large Zip file is apparently attached to your email but in fact it is not.
The attached Zip file you see in your Outlook email is in fact a placeholder (see the size of he file mentioned in the email attached file icon is 1 KB).
Attach2Cloud will upload (automatically) this very large attached file to OneDrive when you send your email and will replace its current placeholder icon it by a OneDrive shortcut before the email is sent.

Let's click on Send to see what exactly happens when sending this email.

At the time you click on Send, Attach2Cloud displays the "Attached File Control Center".

The Attached File Control Center lists the files attached to the email being sent and enables you to upload the attached files of your choice to OneDrive (simply check the files to upload).

As you can see in the above screenshot, our large Zip file (981 MB) resulting of the compression of our 1.4 GB folder is checked and will be uploaded to OneDrive.
If we try to uncheck it, Attach2Cloud warns us:

And if, despite this warning, we try to validate the Attached File Control Center window without checking at least our largest attached file, Attach2Cloud prevents us to send our email:

Let's check both files then click OK.

Our email is put in the Outlook Outbox, like any other email to be sent.
Et voilà!
Attach2Cloud then uploads the attached files to OneDrive, shares them with the email recipients and replaces them with OneDrive shortcuts in the email being sent.
Once these operations are completed, Outlook sends the email containing the OneDrive shortcuts to its recipients. All this is 100% automatic.

Please have a look at these pages for more details bout these operations:

• How to send gigantic files (like multi-Gigabyte files) in Outlook?
• Why Attach2Cloud is the simplest, easiest and fastest way to upload and share files on OneDrive
• More details about the Attached File Control Center

Try for Yourself!

Enjoy sending Multi-Gigabyte Outlook emails to your colleagues and friends, Download a free fully functional evaluation copy of Attach2Cloud for Outlook and OneDrive.
It takes less than one minute to install.

Then see for yourself how easy it is to send extra-large (or not) files and folders as Outlook attached files, thanks to Attach2Cloud:
Once Attach2cloud is installed, start Outlook, create a new email, attach some files and/or folders (large or not) to it and send it. That's it. You have nothing special to do!

Some questions about Attach2Cloud?

For a more complete description of Attach2cloud, please see the Attach2Cloud home page and the Attach2cloud Usage Cases page.

Please also have a look at the Attach2Cloud Q&A page and don't hesitate to contact us, we'll always be most pleased to answer any questions you may have about Attach2Cloud.

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Last updated: Sept 7, 2020

How to Attach a Folder in Outlook Email

Source: https://www.attach2cloud.com/blog/how-to/how-to-attach-explorer-folders-to-outlook-emails/

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