Office 365 Can Now Tackle Bigger Files

There’s good news for Office 365 fans: email files, once limited to 25 MB, can now be as large as 150 MB, an important file jump for users who need to send a photo slide deck, PowerPoint presentation, or other graphics-heavy content. Users have always been able to reap the benefits of sending a link to content stored in the cloud, but this update removes the step of having to port your files over to your OneDrive or Dropbox accounts in order to share them via email.

While the cross-platform subscription service will not change the default size from 25MB automatically, system administrators have that capability. They can even adjust the email limit sizes on accounts individually; that’s a handy feature for a school, for example, allowing the administration to keep students from sending larger files while allowing faculty to have higher content access. Of course, there is a streamlined step for companies that have more than 1,000 email accounts to adjust, preventing them from having to do so one-by-one.

It’s important to note that the new file size limit still includes the growth of the email message as it’s passed from sender to recipient and back again. Each time the message is sent or replied to, it grows, of course. Users could potentially find that their message becomes irretrievable if it has been replied to too many times.

This update to Office 365 comes in time to get new users well acquainted with the platform and make any existing account holders even more reliant on the service in time for the anticipated fall 2015 launches of both Windows 10 and Office 2016. The existing format of Office 365 subscriptions make it especially enticing for people who need to seamlessly switch between PC/Mac, tablets/iPads and their smartphones, since the functionality of the full Office product extends across all those devices. There has been speculation from TechRadar that the fall reveal of Windows 10 will include a subscription option, potentially known as Windows 365 in keeping with Microsoft’s “we’re everywhere!” focus.