When sending documents in bulk as email attachments you may find that the number of documents means that they cannot be sent all in one email.
Your email system may have limits which apply when sending emails and the email system of the person or organisation you are sending to will have limits for receiving emails. The limits will be different for different email systems. There is usually an overall size limit of between 20MB and 50MB. There will also be a limit to the number of MIME parts allowed - typically 100. Each attachment in an email represents at least one MIME part, some type of document may take more than one MIME part, so, depending on the type of documents you are seeking to send as attachments to a single email (whether PDF, EML or JPG etc.), the limit for number of attachments could be as low as 20 say or as high as 80.
If, when attempting to send an email with many attached documents, you receive an error message saying the the email has bounced - i.e. has not been delivered - due to exceeding a size or MIME-part limit, you need to break it down and send only some of the documents attached to one email and then further documents attached to a second email, etc.
When sending documents using multiple emails, it is important to provide some means for the recipient to double-check that they have received all the emails.
You could put in the Subject Line of the emails: e.g.
EMAIL 1 of 3
EMAIL 2 of 3
EMAIL 3 of 3
but often you will not know, at the outset, how many emails will be needed to send all the documents you are planning to send. So normally you would put in the Subject Line e.g.:
EMAIL 1
EMAIL 2
EMAIL 3
EMAIL 4
EMAIL 5 - FINAL
Then when sending the first email you can say e.g.
Due to email size limits I am sending you the documents in a number of emails. This is EMAIL 1 and the last email will have FINAL in the Subject Line.
If you have a very large file, such as a video file, which by itself exceeds your email size limit you can use a file transfer system such as FileMail.
Disclaimer
This information page is designed to be used only by clients of John Antell who have entered into an agreement for the provision of legal services. The information in it is necessarily of a general nature and will not be applicable to every case: it is intended to be used only in conjunction with more specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.
This page was lasted updated in January 2025. Disclaimer