I recently was asked why an email message was such in the Outlook outbox, "it has been there 'sending' for ages and usually they are sent in a flash".

After going through all the usual checks with the user, I asked "how big is the email message?".

"One hundred and forty five meg." was the answer. 

"Well I guess we have found the issue!! I think you are asking too much from the internet connection your are using, as well as the message may most likely be rejected by the receiving mail server, if not before, as it is quiet a sizeable message. Let's look at how this can be reduced to a more practical size."

What is a practical size?
This question in itself can create discussion, but let's say a practical size is 10 meg or less. Even an email approaching 10 meg in size may be rejected by the receipient's email server, the recipients email size restrictions or place the recipients permitted inbox size quota over the permisable limit of use.

The email in question had attached several multi-page documents which had been scanned and saved in TIFF file format. TIFF files are image files which are of a raw format, i.e. the format is not compressed or distorted in any way when a document is scanned and saved as a TIFF. TIFF's are great if every detail of a scanned document has to be replicatable, and you have sufficient storage space on the hard drive.

However, scanning to TIFF which is intended to be emailed may not be the best choice, escpecially if the document is 85 pages plus.

Most scanning software has an option to select the format of the file that will be created when a document is scanned. In the above case, the Canon scanning software permitted the creation of PDF and JPG files, much better suited to the job at hand, and the result was by using the PDF format the email message reduced in size to less than 5 meg.