How to Bypass the 25MB Gmail and Outlook Attachment Limit

There is nothing more frustrating than finishing a major report or portfolio, hitting send, and receiving a "File too large to attach" error from your email provider.

The Standard Limits

Nearly all major corporate and personal email providers instituted hard caps on attachment sizes over a decade ago to prevent server overload. These limits have rarely changed:

• Gmail: 25 MB
• Outlook / Hotmail: 20 MB
• Yahoo Mail: 25 MB
• Apple Mail: 20 MB

Because email encoding inherently adds about 33% overhead to files, a file that reads as 18MB on your computer might trigger a 24MB rejection on Outlook. You should always target 15MB or less for safety.

Solution 1: Compress the PDF (Recommended)

If your document is a PDF, the easiest solution is to flatten and compress the internal graphics. High-resolution photos embedded in presentations are usually the culprit for bloated file sizes.

Use our Email PDF Compressor. It will rasterize massive background images down to web-friendly sizes while preserving the vector data for your text, meaning the document remains crisp and readable.

Solution 2: Split the Document

If you are sending legal exhibits, medical records, or a massive 100-page portfolio, compression alone might not be enough to get under 25MB. In this scenario, you must divide the document.

Use a PDF Splitter to break the document in half (e.g., Pages 1-50, and Pages 51-100). You can then attach "Part 1" and "Part 2" to the email.