{"id":42089,"date":"2021-08-18T19:38:07","date_gmt":"2021-08-18T19:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/?p=42089"},"modified":"2021-08-18T19:38:08","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T19:38:08","slug":"email-gmail-zip-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/email-gmail-zip-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Email: Gmail: zip or not?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2>Self-tutoring about Gmail: to zip or not to zip?<\/h2>\n<p>\nI sent an email with an attached zip file to a friend, but they never received it. I tried again: still nothing. Next, I sent it to my old hotmail account. I received it there.<\/p>\n<p>I wondered: is Gmail not accepting zip files as attachments? <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/mail\/answer\/6590?hl=en#zippy=%2Cmessages-that-have-attachments\">support.google.com\/mail<\/a> suggests that zip files can be blocked if they contain other types that are objectionable. .zip, itself, doesn&#8217;t appear in the list of forbidden extensions, which is meant to be updated often.<\/p>\n<p>Next I contemplated the fact that my friend couldn&#8217;t <em>receive<\/em> the email with the zip attachment. Could, however, a Gmail message be composed to include a zip attachment, then sent elsewhere? I opened a Gmail, made a small zip file of my current resume, then attached that in a message from the Gmail account to my hotmail one. Success &#8211; with no complaints from Gmail.\n<\/p>\n<p>Next, I decided to reply to that Gmail message (and therefore account) with a message carrying another zip attachment. Once again, it worked. I&#8217;ve got two emails in that Gmail account, one in Sent and one in Inbox, both with zip attachments.<\/p>\n<p>\nWhat&#8217;s the story? Sometimes a zip file can be successfully attached to a Gmail message, then sent. Gmail, it seems, can track what&#8217;s inside the zip file: if the attached zip contains a forbidden other type of file, it may not work. Similarly, sometimes an email with a zip attachment can be received in Gmail, so long as Gmail doesn&#8217;t think the attached zip contains any forbidden file types.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, the zips that did succeed were much smaller (around 300 KB) than the one that didn&#8217;t (around 5MB). Moreover, the successful ones carried only .docx and .pdfs, while the unsuccessful one contained a much greater variety of files.<\/p>\nJack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\">Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-tutoring about Gmail: to zip or not to zip? I sent an email with an attached zip file to a friend, but they never received it. I tried again: still nothing. Next, I sent it to my old hotmail account. &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/email-gmail-zip-or-not\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Email: Gmail: zip or not?<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2426],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-email-programs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42089"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42102,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42089\/revisions\/42102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}