Attachments are not compressed by Outlook 98

In addition to sending text messages, Microsoft Outlook can send attached files with your e-mail. Including an attachment in an e-mail message 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 97 (Bernd Kemmlers)

http://bks.simplenet.com/ (http://bks.simplenet.com/)

Features the ability to create, view, and extract Zip files. Also uses a slider bar control to determine the amount of compression used.

MaX Compression (C2C Systems)

http://www.c2c.com/site/products/max_overview.asp (http://www.c2c.com/site/products/max_overview.asp)

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

TurboZip (Pacific Gold Coast)

http://www.turbozip.com (http://www.turbozip.com)

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.)

http://www.winzip.com (http://www.winzip.com)

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.

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products. Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information. For information about how to contact P1, click the appropriate article number in the following list to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: