Thanks to the email we can share real-time communications, files, comments. But here’s how to do it when, instead, you have to send an entire folder of files.
The technology has revolutionized the way of communicating, improving the timing and also the simplicity in using the related tools compared to traditional ways of communication, such as the letter sent by post. And the more the society needs to speed up the transmission of information the more the technological research response will go on in the attempt to create new communication systems. The goal is always the same: to make life easier for users by creating procedures that are always simpler, more and more comfortable (up to having only to select and click a button), always faster in action. And it is undoubted that, especially in the field of work but also, in general, in everyone’s daily life, the need for sharing is not limited to photographs or short messages or to service notes, but to documents of all kinds, acts of every type, video files (generally the heaviest depending on the resolution) or audio files. It is well-known, and intuitive even by those who do not make much use of personal computers, as you send attachments, even when they are more than one. But it becomes difficult when it comes to sending entire folders, containing lots of files and all kinds of files. In fact, to those who have not had the need to forward a folder and, naively, after performing the operation that would do with any file, we have been delivered in the email a communication that, in essence, reports that the email was not delivered. The main problem if not exclusive of this result is the excessive size, and therefore the high weight, of the folder. Then, whether you use e-mail, certified e-mail, you must know that this difficulty is a false problem, there is the technique to bypass the impossibility of sending. Here, then, explained how to send a folder by email.
Index
The procedure to send a folder by email
In general, the procedure for sending one or more folders by email to a recipient is the same. Or, to put it better, its phases are the same, consisting in
1) transforming the folder that interests us in another folder, with the same content but compressed, that is, reduced in its size;
2) in the attachment of the folder obtained in this way to the email to be sent;
3) in the actual order given to our “send” email. However, for the functioning of the PCs there are several operating programs, as well as older and therefore older operating systems. This multiplicity of operating systems involves a slight variation in the orders that we will give to our personal computer. The phases are broadly the same, therefore, but, concretely, depending on the operating system installed on your personal computer, the order of the individual items to be selected will be slightly different. But, in fact, nothing really complex. Then, proceeding gradually, we see, before anything else, what we need to have to be able to proceed to send a folder by email.
What you need to have and the steps of the procedure to send a folder by email
In order to send a folder through the use of an e-mail, either through the online client or through the e-mail manager installed on your PC (like Microsoft Outlook and similar), you need two things:
- your personal computer, either fixed or portable
- and a program that compresses files, that is, reduces their size and, therefore, the weight, like WinRAR or Winzip or, again, 7-Zip or Free PDF Compressor. They are free of charge, therefore, for the download of the software there is only the embarrassment of the choice.
In general, as anticipated, the technique used to send one or more folders consists of substantially the same phases for all the different types of operating systems. In fact, it can be summarized in only three phases of simple application:
- a first step is the reduction of the weight of the folder that is realized with compression software, that is able to reduce the weight of the entire folder, making the work of the e-mail client easier. The folders that will be created by this procedure are a duplication of the original ones, only with less heaviness, but the relative names will end with different suffixes like .zip, .rar, .tar and so on. But these are just different extensions of compressed files;
- the second phase is the procedure for attaching the reduced folder to the email, which is carried out in the same way as sending one or more files;
- the last phase is represented by the sending of the email. Since at that point the folder sent will be lighter than the original one, but still legible by the recipient of the email, the receipt is almost guaranteed.
The procedure just mentioned is to be considered the same to be done both in the case of sending a single folder or in the case of sending multiple folders. And it is also necessary to know that in the case of presence of encrypted files, ie the content of which is hidden by cryptography capable of altering it in signs and symbols, then, in a kind of nonsense text, it is advisable not to send them with the folder. This is because the encrypted files, after compression, arrive to the decrypted recipient, that is, legible in their original content and that they wanted to keep hidden.
Send a folder by email with Windows operating systems
The procedure to follow for the following operating systems windows 10, windows 8, windows 7, windows vista and windows XP, is summarized in the following method :
- locate the folder you want to send. In case you want to send more folders, select them together with the “shift” key that is the one identified on the keyboard with the arrows at the top, and it is on the left above “Ctrl” and on the right under the “Enter” key, or insert them in a appropriate larger folder that contains all of them;
- Compress the folder that interests us. Once the selection is made, click on the right mouse button and scroll until you find the “send to” or “send to” and similar items and then, in the list that appears, select the “collapse” or “folder” tablet and similar. Be careful because in some versions of Windows XP this option does not exist, therefore, in this case the procedure is slightly different: you must go with the cursor in any free point of a folder and pressing the right mouse button you choose the item “new “From the list that appeared and select the item” compressed folder (zip) “, giving it a name and pressing enter. Then drag the folder you want to compress into this compressed folder;
- attach the folder to the email. At this point we start our e-mail program or go online on our email, create a new e-mail and let’s attach the compressed folder (therefore, the one ending with the suffixes .rar, .zip, etc.), as usual we do to attach a file, waiting for the upload to finish. If we have Windows 10, we can also use another even simpler technique, which is allowed by the operating system. That is, we directly select the compressed folder and in the menu created by pressing the right mouse button we choose the item “send to” and, subsequently, the item “mail recipient” or similar and the game is done;
- send the folder from the email as usual. Who will receive the communication with the compressed file, to read its contents, simply download it to your PC and unzip it. To do this, just double click on the compressed folder and then choose with the right button the “extract” or “decompress” and similar. And it will have the folder as if it were the original of the sender.
Send a folder by email with MAC OS X operating systems
If we own this kind of operating system to make our pc work, to send a folder with the email we must:
- compress the chosen folder, pressing the “control” or “ctrl” key and at the same time clicking the right mouse button, which allows the appearance of a list from which we will select “collapse”;
- attach the compressed folder to the email as if we were attaching a word file or any file, directly from the e-mail program installed on our PC (like Microsoft Outlook or Incredimail etc.) or accessing the online client;
- send the email proceeding as usual, by selecting “Enter”. Who will receive the email with the compressed file, must download the latter on his PC and decompress it. The game will be done and the recipient will have received the folder in an intelligible, visible, as desired by the sender.
Send a folder by email with other operating systems
If, however, we have other operating systems, perhaps more dated, such as, for example, Windows 2000 or Mac OS 9, we have to follow this process which includes:
- download a data compression program on your personal computer and wait for the normal installation. The software we have chosen, such as WinRAR, Winzip, Free PDF Compressor and the like, will help us to reduce the size of the folder we intend to send before attaching it and forwarding it via the e-mail service;
- reduce the size of the folder by selecting, for example, the folder that interests us with the right mouse button and clicking on the item that will appear “collapse” or similar and choosing where to save the new compressed folder;
- attach and send the email, proceeding as usual, therefore, we start by launching our e-mail program or go on the online client, so we create a new e-mail to be forwarded and let’s attach the compressed folder. The procedure for attaching the folder to be followed is the same that we usually use to attach a simple file. We will wait for the folder to upload and then click on “send”. And so, the game is done.