Networks are engineered for resources (files) to be in one place (a file or web server) and E-mail is intended to contain a pointer to the resource (Uniform Resource Locator or URL). Servers can be optimized. Multiple copies of documents or files won't exist "out there" (in case of revisions). Network resources can be better utilized. The whole process is much more efficient if we do not attach files to E-mail.

It is not true that it is a business "standard" to attach files to E-mail. Every major corporation has policies against this. It is not true that this is the easiest way to share files. It's cumbersome and slow.

In addition, E-mail attachments are frequently abused to carry malicious content such as viruses and trojans.

As a courtesy to our customers who do want to send files via Email, we allow attachments under the following conditions.

• The maximum size of any one Email plus attachments must be less than 8 Megs.
• The attachments must be standard .doc, .rtf, non-passworded .zip, .xls, graphics or .txt files.
• All attachments are scanned for viruses and Trojans and infected messages are deleted.

We encourage our customers to use FTP or WebDAV to place files on the web server then send the URL in E-mail. We can also help set up HTTP-based file servers.

You'll be surprised how much better it is to do file transfers the right way.