Email Attachment Too Large? How to Shrink Videos, PDFs and Photos to Fit

By Thiago · Updated September 25, 2026 · 2 min read

You attach a file, click Send, and the email service refuses it or turns it into a link. Almost always the fix is the same: make the file smaller. Here is how much space you really have and how to shrink each kind of file.

How big can an attachment be?

The limit counts all attachments together, not each one. And email encodes files in a way that makes them about a third bigger on the way, so aim for about 18 MB in total to be safe. The person receiving it may also have a smaller limit on their side, especially on company email.

Videos: the usual culprit

A single minute of phone video in 1080p or 4K can be 100 MB or more. To send it by email:

1. Open the video compressor and add the video.
2. Choose Smallest file (up to 720p). 720p still looks sharp on a phone or laptop screen.
3. Download the MP4 and check the size. As a rough guide, one minute at 720p ends up around 10 to 20 MB, depending on how much movement there is.

If a long video still does not fit, email is the wrong tool: share it through a cloud link (Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud) instead.

PDFs: scans and presentations

PDFs made from scans or full of photos are the heavy ones. Open Compress PDF and start with Recommended: it keeps the document easy to read and print at home and often cuts the size by half or more. Use Strong only if it still doesn't fit. PDFs that are mostly typed text are already small and won't shrink much. Our guide on reducing PDF file size goes into more detail.

Photos: send ten instead of three

A modern phone photo is 3 to 8 MB, so a few of them fill an email. Two steps fix it:

1. Resize the photos to about 2000 pixels on the longest side. That is still more than any screen shows, and plenty for printing a normal-size photo.
2. Run them through the image compressor. Together, these usually bring a photo down to 300 KB – 1 MB without a visible difference.

iPhone photos in HEIC format may not open for the person receiving them on Windows. Convert them with HEIC to JPG before sending.

Still too big?

• Send it in parts: split a long PDF with Split PDF and send each part in its own email.
• Use a cloud link: Gmail and Outlook do this automatically for big files. Make sure the link's sharing setting lets the person open it.
• Don't zip photos and videos to make them smaller: they are already compressed, so a ZIP file saves almost nothing. ZIP only helps to send many files as one.