Proofpoint Essentials Attachment Size Limits
| Situation | You are having trouble sending/receiving emails with large attachments and wondering if Proofpoint Essentials enforces a limit on attachment sizes. |
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| Solution |
This article provides information on the attachment size limit imposed by Proofpoint Essentials, and what to expect if that limit is exceeded.
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IMPORTANT
Due to encoding, email programs can add up to 1/3 of the original attachment size to the message. Please keep this in mind when adding attachments.
Size Limits Changes
The attachment size limit cannot be changed. These are platform wide and are standard.
Standard Messaging
Proofpoint Essentials supports email attachments up to 150MB in size by default.
Many organizations will enforce a more stringent attachment size limitation on their mail server (sometimes as low as 10MB). If you are having problems sending/receiving emails with large attachments, it is most likely due to a restriction on your mail server or the recipient's server.
You can create filters to impose size restrictions on inbound and outbound emails at both the Organization and User level. For more information on how to do so, please see our article on Creating a Filter.
Encrypted Messaging
Proofpoint Essentials encryption service does not use the same messaging gateway. The maximum email size when using encryption services is 35MB.
Total Email Size Versus Attachment Size
- Attachments sizes can be seen on a computer when you view it's properties.
- Total Email Size is not the same size. Emails require the attachment to be encoded as part of the body. This encoding process will increase the size of the email up to 33% in most cases.
For the total size to be 35MB, the actual attachment should not exceed 23MB. This is the safest amount when using Encryption.
What happens to an email that exceeds the limit
- Standard - When a Standard email attachment exceeds the size limit, it will be hard bounced unless a filter is present to quarantine.
- Encrypted - When an Encrypted email attachment exceeds the size limit, it will be stuck in a queued state in the email message logs and will fail to be uploaded to the Encryption Portal.
Common Errors
Please see our Common Errors KB for other sets of error messages you may see in relation to this.
Rate Limits
If your are looking for the number of emails and not size of emails, please see the Email Limits KB.