It's been a while since we discussed the best options for sending files to other people so we thought it was about time to go back through it as we get asked this a lot.

Many people send files by email and although this works, it's not ideal. Email was never designed to send files of any size and when you do email a file it can grow up to 10x larger and this can cause problems, especially for people with slow or capped Internet. If you email a large file to a recipient who has capped Internet usage on their mobile device and they automatically download the email, you could have suddenly used up a large portion of their allowance.

Sending files by email also fills up your email account prematurely and can slow your email down to a crawl while it tries to send the file.

The best way we've found for sending files to people is to use Dropbox. Dropbox already provides a great way to create a backup of your files, anything you put into the Dropbox folder on your computer uploads to their servers and is stored securely, the upshot of this is that because Dropbox already have your file(s), it's easy to share them without having to send the actual file.

You don't need a paid Dropbox account to send files in this way, so even with a free 2GB account you can make it much easier for yourself and the recipient to send and receive files.

Using this method, the recipient doesn't need to have a Dropbox account so there's nothing extra for them to sign up for.

macOS


Simply copy the file you want to send into Dropbox and once it's uploaded and you have the green tick next to it, right click on the file and select Copy Dropbox Link.


This will copy a link to the file into your clipboard. You then paste that link into an email or message and send it to the recipient. All they have to do is then click on the link to download the file at a time and place convenient to them. Because all you're sending is a small email with a link, you're barely using any bandwidth and the email will send instantly.

Windows


The process is pretty much the same, you just copy the file into your Dropbox folder, wait for the file to upload and then right click on the file. You then choose Copy Dropbox Link, paste the link into an email and send that to the recipient. The resulting email is hundreds of times smaller and will go instantly.


iOS


You can also share files from Dropbox via your iPhone or iPad. If you have a file in Dropbox and need to send it to someone while you're out of the office or away from home, you just open the Dropbox app on your mobile device and navigate to the file you want to share. Once you've found the file, tap on the three dots as shown below.


You'll now be shown various ways to share the file, simply tap on Copy Link.
The public link to the file will now be in your clipboard so you can paste this into an email or a message and send it over to the recipient.


Android


The process on Android is very similar again. locate the file you want to share and tap on it.

Once the file is open then tap on the share icon.


Now tap on the Share link at the bottom of the screen.
You'll now be given the option of what to do with the link, you can send it directly in a message or an email but in this example, we'll copy it to the clipboard so tap on that icon.

Dropbox will now confirm that your link is ready.



You can now start a new email on your device and paste in the link. The recipient can now download the file, you've barely used any bandwidth and it's all much quicker than actually attaching the file to an email.

A lot of webmail providers such as Outlook.com and Yahoo advertise that you can send absolutely huge email attachments when using their service, what they don't always mention is that they're usually using a service such as Dropbox, OneDrive or their own version of it to deliver the file in the background so they aren't actually sending the file via email as they don't want their servers clogged up with everyone's email attachments.

Although it can take a bit of extra time and organisation to get your files into a sharing service, the benefits to both the sender and the recipient of the email can be huge and it really is the best way to share files with people.