• ITS home
• Help
• Services
• My IT account
• Security
• About

Questions and answers

2603

Can I store files in my email account?

Although it's possible to store files in your email account (necessarily as attachments), we strongly discourage this, for several reasons:

• The attached files are extremely wasteful of space because they typically take up two or three times their original size when converted into an email attachment.
  
  
• Access to the files is slow and clumsy (partly because of the above) and it can be difficult to remember their location because of the lack of a file hierarchy.
  
  
• The files cannot be altered in situ (that is, you cannot open an attached file, make changes to the file and then save it back to the original email).

It is far more efficient to keep files in your main filestore, which is provided for that very purpose.  The email system is provided as an email service, not a file storage facility.

You can store attachments in your file storage area and delete the attachments from the originating emails.  This can be done easily in Outlook, see FAQ 1532 or you can use manual archiving to store email, see FAQ 1637 (this stores the email and the attachment on your N drive).