Solved: The attachment size exceeds the allowable limits in Outlook

Summary: This tutorial helps you to find the root cause of this one error as well as necessary steps to fix this annoying error.

Microsoft Outlook is dominating the email market business. If you are a business user, then you can use it as per your specific requirements. No doubt, MS Outlook provides good features and functions but it limits the size of attachment of 20mb i.e. 20480kb. Whenever you try to attach a file that is greater than its limit, an error prompt “The attachment size exceeds the allowable limits in Outlook 2013”. 

First, Let’s us discuss the root cause of this:

Causes of Error:

There are two main aspects that pose the error which depend on the Email account you are using.

• If the Outlook is configured for Internet Email Account, then the attachment size limit is 20MB or 20480 KB. If you have added the attachment that exceeds the size limit then this error happen

•  If you are using Exchange server account, this error occurs when you send one or more emails attachment and their sum is greater than 10 MB or 10240 KB.

Resolutions of this Error:

Here I will discuss solutions for both emails account that is Internet and Exchange.

For an Internet Email Account (POP3, IMAP, HTTP)

You can get rid of this issue by changing the attachment size limit of Outlook Emails. Follow the below steps:

1.    First of all, close the Outlook and then go to Start

2.    Type ‘regedit’ in the search box and press Enter key to access Regidit Editor

    3.    A new Window prompt i.e. “Do you want to allow this program to make changes to this computer”. Click on Yes

4.  When entering the Registry key, You have to find the following registry key in the sequence: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\version\Outlook\Preferences

   Note: The version shows the Outlook version, In case of Outlook 2007 there will be    12.0,     In Outlook 2010 It will be 14.0, In Outlook 2013 it refers 15.0. Outlook 2016 version will be      16.0.

5.    Now Right click on the preferences and the go to new and select DWORD 32-bit value

               

6.    Here name the newly created DWORD as MaximumAttachmentSize

7.    Double click on the MaximumAttachmentSize to specify its value data. Now make the below changes to the pop up dialogue box

•  In the base section, Check the Decimal

•  In the “Value data” field, type the size limit as per your requirement. The value you enter will be in the KB

In the value data box, you can Put ‘0’ to set the size limit of attachment to unlimited. If you have to set particular size limit then put the value in the value data box in KB

                                       

·     After entering the Value data and base, Click on Ok. Then Go to File >> Exit to close the Registry Editor and restart your Computer to make the changes completely.

Microsoft Exchange Server Account

If you are using Exchange server account, the size limit will be 10MB. To do the changes that is used to set the attachment size limit, follow the steps:

Note: In order to make the changes to exchange server account you must be an exchange server administrator. Other users don’t have access to Exchange Management Console

1.    Open the Exchange Management Console

2.    Go to Organization Configuration, Click on Hub Transport

3.    In the Global Settings, Click on Transport Settings

4.    In the Transport Settings, Go to Action Pane and click on Properties.

5.    A new dialog box appears “Transport Settings Properties” go to the ‘General’ tab and then set a value in ‘Maximum Send Size (KB)’. Then Click Ok

Final Thoughts:   

The above steps by steps guide is helpful to change the size limit of attachments. But, I advise to follow all the manual steps carefully. Before doing this practice, you should take backup of your original data.

To be continued. If you have any further query or issue which is related to Outlook, then feel free to ask in the below comment section.