Email Help: Sending Large E-Mail Messages or Attachments

Why are there limits?

When you send a message to multiple recipients, either individually listed or as a mailing list, separate copies of the message and all attachments are created and stored in every recipient's mailbox. This can add up to very large amounts of disk space and is a very inefficient use of resources. It could also overwhelm the mail server. Therefore, it is preferable to include all text within the body of your message rather than attaching, for instance, an MS-Word document.

How do I send a large message or attachment?

First, search on-line to see if the file is already available. If it is, then just send the web address in your message. Note that most University forms are already on-line and can be found by searching the Auburn, ACES, or College of Ag web sites. Forms from another organization are usually on-line at the organization's web site. You can also search Google for the filename.

If your attachment is not already on-line, then you can temporarily copy it to your personal web space on the ACES/Ag web server and send the recipient a message with the URL. For PCs on the Auburn domain, your personal web space will show up as drive P:\. When you place a file there, the URL will be www.acesag.auburn.edu/~username/filename where username is your ACES/Ag username and filename is the name of your file. You may also have a "temp" folder within your P: drive, with a URL of www.acesag.auburn.edu/~username/temp. By default, this folder will allow a WWW user to view a file listing (which means you do not need to supply the filename(s) to your intended recipient). This folder is NOT backed up like other network space and thus works well for simple file transfers. Please remove files from your P: drive when they are no longer needed, and recognize that "temp" is exactly that...files older than 30 days are subject to deletion by network administrators. Note that some web browsers will not work with links that contain spaces, so be sure your filename does not contain spaces.

Alternatively, you can upload your file to the ACES/Ag sFTP server (sftp.acesag.auburn.edu) using WinSCP and place the file in the /opt/public/temp directory. Your file will then be available at http://secure.aces.edu/temp/filename. Also, this is a secure directory and the recipients of your message must login with their ACES/Ag username and password. Files uploaded to /opt/public/temp directory will remain there for 30 days. If you need to make files available for longer than that, or if you need to send large messages to someone outside of ACES/Ag, please contact John Hartley to secure web hosting space.