OL2000: Attachments Are Not Compressed by Outlook

SUMMARY

In addition to sending text messages, Microsoft Outlook 2000 can send attached files with your e-mail. Including an attachment in e-mail increases the file size of your message and can impact transmission speed and create network bottlenecks.

One way to decrease this negative impact is file compression. However due to mail standards Outlook does not compress file attachments.

The following third-party products that perform file compression are readily available.

BKZip 98 (Bernd Kemmlers)

Features the ability to create, view, and extract Zip files. Also offers compression levels.

MaX Compression (C2C Systems)

This add-in automatically compresses and decompresses attachments in Outlook.

TurboZip (Pacific Gold Coast)

You can work with files within archives and e-mails without unzipping or decoding. Also offers built-in ActiveX control for WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) viewing of Office 97 documents and spreadsheets.

WinZip (Niko Mak Computing, Inc.)

WinZip features built-in support for popular Internet file formats, including TAR, gzip, Unix compress, UUencode, BinHex, and MIME. ARJ, LZH, and ARC files are supported via external programs.

ZipMagic (Mijenix Corporation)

Shows Zip files as folders so you can view the contents without extracting the files. Supports the universal ZIP format, as well as ARJ, LHA/LZH, Z, GZIP, TAR, TAZ, TGZ, CAB, and ZOO. It also can open and decode BinHex, UUEncode, XXEncode, and MIME.

ZipOut (MicroEye, Inc.)

ZipOut automatically compresses attachments to Mail, Post, Appointment, Meeting Request, Contact, Distribution List, Journal, and Task items, as well as custom Outlook forms based on these message types. ZipOut operates in both the Internet Only and Corporate/Workgroup modes of Outlook 2000.