An email attachment is a sent along with an email message. One or more files can be attached to any email message, and be sent along with it to the recipient. This is typically used as a simple method to share documents and images. Originally, ARPANET, UUCP, and Internet SMTP email allowed 7-bit ASCII text only. Text files were emailed by including them in the message body. In the mid 1980s text files could be grouped with UNIX tools such as bundle and shar (shell archive) and included in email message bodies, allowing them to be unpacked on remote UNIX systems with a single shell command. The COMSYS/MSGDMS system at MIT offered "Enclosures" beginning by 1976. Users inside COMSYS could receive the enclosure file directly. Messages sent to users out of the COMSYS world sent the enclosure as part of the message body, which was useful only for text files. Attaching non-text files was first accomplished in 1980 by manually encoding 8-bit files using Mary Ann Horton's uuencode, and later using BinHex or xxencode and pasting the resulting text into the body of the message. When the "Attachment" user interface first appeared on PCs in cc:Mail around 1985, it used the uuencode format for SMTP transmission, as did Microsoft Mail later. Modern email systems use the MIME standard, making email attachments more utilitarian and seamless. This was developed by Nathaniel Borenstein and collaborator Ned Freed - with the standard being officially released as RFC2045 in 1996. With MIME, a message and all its attachments are encapsulated in a single multipart message, with base64 encoding used to convert binary into 7-bit ASCII text - or on some modern mail servers, optionally full 8-bit support via the 8BITMIME extension. Email standards such as MIME do not specify any file size limits, but in practice email users will find that they cannot successfully send very large files across the Internet. This is because of a number of potential limits: Mail systems often arbitrarily limit the size their users are allowed to submit.

About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related publications (3)
Related concepts (6)
Computer virus
A computer virus is a type of malware that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code into those programs. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a computer virus, a metaphor derived from biological viruses. Computer viruses generally require a host program. The virus writes its own code into the host program. When the program runs, the written virus program is executed first, causing infection and damage.
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily being popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as calendaring, task managing, contact managing, note-taking, journal logging and web browsing. Individuals can use Outlook as a stand-alone application; organizations can deploy it as multi-user software (through Microsoft Exchange Server or SharePoint) for shared functions such as mailboxes, calendars, folders, data aggregation (i.
Gmail
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide making it the largest email service in the world. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or through the official mobile application. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and IMAP protocols. At its launch in 2004, Gmail provided a storage capacity of one gigabyte per user, which was significantly higher than its competitors offered at the time.
Show more

Graph Chatbot

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.