How to send large files by email using WeTransfer

If you’re trying to send someone a large file like a video, you’ll find that you can’t just attach it to an email. Most email services like Gmail, Yahoo and www.Outlook.com have a limit of about 25 megabytes for attachments. So what if you want to send a file that’s much bigger, like more than a gigabyte?

In this tutorial article, I am going to show you how to send large files by email, using a free service called WeTransfer. This is Dave’s Tech Rescue, where I solve your problems with computers, Internet and technology. If you have a problem you would like me to solve, leave it in the comments below and I will do my best to answer it. Now question is.

 

How do I send a large file to someone by email?

Well a really good way to send large files is with WeTransfer, which is free to use and lets you send files of up to 2 gigabytes in size. What is really handy is WeTransfer let you know when the recipient has opened your file. It is worth mentioning that there are other ways that might work better for you. For example, if you’re already using cloud storage like Dropbox or OneDrive, you can right-click on the file and share it with other users that way.

If you are looking for an easy way to share a video with lots of people, you might want to upload it to YouTube or Facebook. But I think if you want a quick and reliable way to send a large file, that is nice and simple for the person on the receiving end, then you can’t do much better than WeTransfer.

How to Transfer Files with WeTransfer?

Let’s take a look at how it works. I’ve got this video file; it’s just a clip I’m going to use in one of my other tutorials. Let’s just check the size of it. It’s 1.08 gigabytes, so it’s within the 2 gigabyte limit on WeTransfer I’m going to show you how to send this file by WeTransfer, and I’ll show what the other person needs to do to download the file when they get the email, and I’ll show you the email notification you get when they’ve downloaded it. The first thing we need to do is open the WeTransfer website, which is WeTransfer.com.

You need to agree to the website terms. And this is the form you use to send your file – it’s really simple. At the top you can add the file or files you want to send, and then you put the email of the person you’re sending it to, then your email address so they know it’s from you, and a message from you. Then you would click Transfer. So let’s do each of these. I’m going to click up here, and select the video file that’s on my Desktop. Then I’m going to send it to my email address, but you should put the person you are sending it to, I am going to put it from one of my other email addresses. I am going to type a quick message here. If you press this little button you have a couple of options here, you don’t really need to go into here, but you can choose to get a link, rather than sending it by email.

Send File via Email

So you could then send someone the link by messenger or another app. But I’m going to stick with sending it by email. And there are a couple of options here that you can get if you sign up for a pro account. Normally the email you send is valid for a week, but pro users can remove this time limit. And you can also add a password to the file if you have a Pro account. So I’m going to click Transfer, and now the file gets uploaded. I’m not going to make you wait, so let’s fast forward past this part. You can see you get big adverts in the main part of the web page by the way, and obviously this helps to fund the free service they are running. There’s our file uploaded, and it just lets you know that the person you sent it to has 7 days to open it. Now we can close the page.

Send Emails with WeTransfer

Let’s take a look at the email that the recipient will get. There is the email from WeTransfer. Click on it, and we can see the file is going to be deleted in a week. There’s the message I sent. And I’m going to click here to get the file I’ve been sent. There’s my file. I can click Download, and Save here. When it’s finished downloading, I can open my Downloads folder, and there’s the video file I’ve received. And I just want to show you the email notification you get when someone clicks on a file you sent them. It just confirms when they downloaded your files, and it also gives you a link to the download just in case you need to see your files again. I mentioned that you get more features with a Pro membership, so I’ll just show you this – but I’m not being paid by WeTransfer to promote their services or anything.

WeTransfer Free and Paid membership

On the WeTransfer website you can click on Upgrade at the top, and then see what it gives you – it’s basically a larger file limit, and you can store 1 terabyte of files in total, and you can make the files delete after a month instead of 7 days, or you can make them last forever if you want. And you can also password protect your files if you want a bit more security. And there are a few more features listed here – you can send files to more people, and you can get more customization in the emails you send, and there’s support if you need it. So did WeTransfer work for you? Please let me know in the comments below how you got on, and if you found this video helpful please give it the thumbs up. While you are here, why not check out one of my other articles. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time. Please comment your views about these useful tutorial articles.